Before Night Falls

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

For his sophomore feature film effort, visual artist Julian Schnabel chronicles the life of one of Cuba's most charismatic literary voices, the late Reinaldo Arenas. Working with Arenas' friends and family, Schnabel recounts the author's impoverished rural upbringing and the intense love and support he receives from his mother (played by the director's wife, Olatz Lopez Garmendia). As a young man, Arenas (Javier Bardem) is singled out by his teachers and encouraged to further his skills as a writer -- no easy task, considering the Castro regime's censorship of any work considered to be subversive or anti-authoritarian. Still, the author manages to smuggle his work out of the country through friends, who arrange for one of his novels to be published in France. Not only persecuted for his creative beliefs, the openly gay Arenas is jailed on a bogus sex charge; he escapes internment only to be captured and persecuted later for his contraband dispatches. In 1980, Arenas is finally allowed to leave Cuba for the United States, where he achieves freedom of expression but not prosperity. Schnabel's first film was another portrait of an artist, 1996's Basquiat; Bardem made his name in several of director Pedro Almodovar's Spanish-language productions. Before Night Falls premiered at the 2000 Venice Film Festival, where it received the Best Actor and Grand Special Jury prizes, and made its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Bardem would go on to receive a host of accolades, including an eventual Best Actor nomination at the 2001 Academy Awards. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Audio: PCM Stereo, 5.1
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Subtitle: Spanish, French, English
• Features:
  • Widescreen version
  • 5.1 Surround Sound
  • 2.0 stereo Surround Sound
  • 5.1 Spanish audio track
  • English, Spanish, and French subtitles and English closed captions
  • Commentary with director Julian Schnabel, actor Javier Bardem, screenwriter Lazaro Gomez-Carriles, composer Carter Burwell, and co-director of photography Xavier Perez Grobert
  • Documentary shorts: excerpts from "Improper Conduct," 1983 interview with Reinaldo Arenas, behind-the-scenes/home movie by Lola Schnabel, "Little Notes on Painting" artwork by Julian Schnabel
  • Cast and crew filmographies
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • DVD-ROM content
  • Link to original website

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Nominated Best Actor - 2000 (Javier Bardem)

• American Film Institute

•     Won AFI's Top 10 Films of the Year - 2000

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association

•     Nominated Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama - 2000 (Javier Bardem)

• Independent Spirit Awards

•     Won Best Actor - 2000 (Javier Bardem)
•     Nominated Best Cinematography - 2000 (Xavier Pérez Grobet, Guillermo Rosas)
•     Nominated Best Director - 2000 (Julian Schnabel)
•     Nominated Best Picture - 2000

• National Board of Review

•     Won Best Actor - 2000 (Javier Bardem)
•     Won Special Recognition for Freedom of Expression - 2000
•     Nominated Best Picture - 2000

• National Society of Film Critics

•     Won Best Actor - 2000 (Javier Bardem)

• Venice International Film Festival

•     Won Grand Prize of the Jury - 2000 (Julian Schnabel)
•     Won Volpi Cup for Best Actor - 2000 (Javier Bardem)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Julian Schnabel

• Producer:

  Jon Kilik

• Screenwriter:

  Julian Schnabel, Lazaro Gomez Carriles, Cunningham O'Keefe

• Book Author:

  Reinaldo Arenas

• Cinematographer:

  Xavier Pérez Grobet, Guillermo Rosas

• Composer (Music Score):

  Carter Burwell

• Editor:

  Michael Berenbaum

• Production Designer:

  Salvador Parra

• Art Director:

  Antonio Muno-Hierro

• Associate Producer:

  Matthias Ehrenberg

• Executive Producer:

  Julian Schnabel

• Costume Designer:

  Maria Estela Fernandez

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Christian Wangler

• First Assistant Director:

  Sebastian Gaetano Silva

• Additional Music:

  Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson

REVIEW:

• Julian Schnabel's feverish portrait of Revolutionary Cuba through the eyes of one of its most vocal expatriates, Before Night Falls is everything the director's first artist biopic (1996's Basquiat) wasn't. Where that film sacrificed character and nuance for elaborate shots and showy performances, Night winds its naturalistic imagery tightly to a heartfelt core: the wide-eyed, expressive lead performance of Javier Bardem as Reinaldo Arenas. Never resorting to martyred-genius posturing, Bardem gives Arenas a brash, scruffy physicality, suggesting that the writer was affected as much by the hedonism of his youth as he was by the injustices of his adult life under the Castro regime. Characters appear and disappear from the story with little warning (Schnabel's decision to cast Johnny Depp in two cameo roles proves distracting), and their motivations can be elusive at times. Instead of detracting from the experience, however, these plot hiccups reinforce the notion that Arenas' life was a collection of juxtapositions both absurd and rational, drab and passionate. When Arenas succumbs to AIDS in the flat, colorless sequence that ends the film, it's neither an indictment of American culture nor a weepy, disease-movie crescendo of emotion. Rather, viewers are left with the feeling that Schnabel has encompassed the full scope of an extraordinary existence, and done justice to a person who would've preferred not to be sentimentalized by death. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi