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Before Night Falls Julian Schnabel

What strikes me about Before Night Falls is how it refuses to let Reinaldo Arenas be reduced to a victim. Julian Schnabel's 2000 biographical drama follows the Cuban poet and novelist from a childhood in the countryside through his early sympathy for the Cuban Revolution, then into the years when Fidel Castro's government turned on him. Being gay made him a target; so did writing against the grain. Censorship, prison, sustained pressure to fold, and he kept at it. The 1980 Mariel boatlift is how he got out, and New York is where he resettled and kept writing until AIDS-related complications ended his life in 1990. Javier Bardem carries the role of Arenas and earned an Oscar nomination for it, catching the defiance and the hunger for freedom in the same frame. Johnny Depp shows up in two parts, Bon Bon and a military officer. Arenas' posthumous memoir is the spine of the whole thing, and Schnabel layers in striking imagery and a poetic approach to desire that's forbidden, creative independence, political cruelty, and the toll of living truthfully where you're not wanted. A tribute to a writer who wouldn't go quiet 🍿

1h

Kimon@kimon

Follow

Before Night Falls Julian Schnabel

What strikes me about Before Night Falls is how it refuses to let Reinaldo Arenas be reduced to a victim. Julian Schnabel's 2000 biographical drama follows the Cuban poet and novelist from a childhood in the countryside through his early sympathy for the Cuban Revolution, then into the years when Fidel Castro's government turned on him. Being gay made him a target; so did writing against the grain. Censorship, prison, sustained pressure to fold, and he kept at it. The 1980 Mariel boatlift is how he got out, and New York is where he resettled and kept writing until AIDS-related complications ended his life in 1990. Javier Bardem carries the role of Arenas and earned an Oscar nomination for it, catching the defiance and the hunger for freedom in the same frame. Johnny Depp shows up in two parts, Bon Bon and a military officer. Arenas' posthumous memoir is the spine of the whole thing, and Schnabel layers in striking imagery and a poetic approach to desire that's forbidden, creative independence, political cruelty, and the toll of living truthfully where you're not wanted. A tribute to a writer who wouldn't go quiet 🍿

1h