Before night falls [DVD]

Before night falls is Julian Schnabel’s second feature, his follow-up to “Basquiat”. The story of Cuban poet and writer Reinaldo Arenas, the screenplay is based on Arenas’ memoirs. The film opens with Arenas’ idyllic, if impoverished youth - brought up by his adoring mother and a dictatorial father who forbade his son’s poetry. A shift to the city exposes Arenas to urban influences and his teachers encourage his artistic expression. Openly gay and politically active, the adult Arenas finds himself persecuted by the Castro regime and his writing is smuggled to France in order to be published. Javier Bardem plays Arenas as a passionate, talented hedonist whose attempts to escape incarceration are both daring and foolhardy. The cinematography depicts Cuba as a magical and beautiful place, saturated in decaying splendour, which is crippled by corruption and state sanctioned police brutality. Schnabel employs an episodic structure to relay the key moments of Arenas’ life. Cuba - a place teeming with culture, food, love, sex and passion - is contrasted with Arenas’ ‘freedom’ in New York. Despite his liberation Arenas is depressed, living austerely and the scenes take on a bleached aesthetic, reflecting perhaps the writer’s longing for his rich homeland.