Before Night Falls
by Les Phillips

Before Night Falls tells the story of the gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, who came to this country as a Marielito, established himself in New York, and died of AIDS. It is directed by Julian Schnabel, who got a lot of flak for his previous film, Basquiat. I liked Basquiat; I especially liked his sense of mise-en-scene and his work with color and set design - not too surprising, from a serious visual artist. I think Schnabel has made a lot of enemies in the art world, and they somehow got to the critical reception for that first film. I hereby forgive him, officially, for casting Dennis Hopper as an aristocratic German art dealer in Basquiat.

Schnabel shot the Cuban sequences in Before Night Falls (most of the movie) somewhere in Mexico. Wherever it was, it translated marvelously into what Havana seems to be like - the emptiness and dilapidation were beautifully achieved.

The movie doesn't essentialize Arenas - he is clearly an artist first and a gay person second, and his art seemed to be at least as important as his sexuality in turning Castro against him. It's far more important to this filmmaker. The screenplay makes the quality of Arenas's writing clear without being overbearing about it. The profession of writing is rarely well portrayed in films. Here it's not so much portrayed as suggested, but that is well done. I do remain puzzled by one thing: some scenes are spoken in Spanish (with subtitles), others in English, and the difference seems arbitrary. I may be missing something obvious here.

Javier Bardem is very good as Arenas. I don't know how else to describe the performance. You scarcely notice that he has to cover a twenty-five year span. He handles scenes involving torture and solitary confinement very well - I'll never forget those scenes, but there was no overacting involved. One of the film's several messages: Being a famous writer doesn't mean that you're going to have health insurance. Get health insurance.

This film is not going to be a big commercial draw. Bardem has won some critics' awards for acting; I doubt that he'll get nominated for an Oscar, though. If Before Night Falls opens where you are, go see it fast, before it leaves.

I was prepared to dislike CAST AWAY - the reunion of the two principals from Forrest Gump provoked fear and trembling. But a great deal of it was very compelling. As you'd expect from Robert Zemeckis, the technical aspects are fine - an accomplished plane crash, scary without being showy. The natural setting is gorgeous and beautifully photographed; the sense of a discrete little world is nicely accomplished.

Some critics have complained that time on the island with Tom gets to be a drag. I thought that duration was necessary to give the viewer a sense of direct interaction with nature, a tiny hint of what time comes to mean to a castaway. Hanks's acting was not stunning but was appropriate, adequate to the task; he's not playing a subtle personality. I was willing to overlook, mostly, the various implausibilities, the sentimental bleeh involving the volleyball, the character's basic repugnance.

Then they bring Tom home. (I hope that didn't come as a shock, dear reader.) And there's no clear (or at least plausible) dramatic or emotional resolution. There are at least two false endings. I had the distinct sense that the ending or endings were revised and re-revised and market-tested by committee, with the usual pushmi-pullyu result.

There are not very many actors in this film, apart from Hanks, but Helen Hunt is one of them.

Steven Soderbergh was his own cinematographer for TRAFFIC, shooting much of it with a handheld camera. The result is a sense of immediacy and presence that is really captivating. Soderbergh cuts artfully back and forth between three interrelated story lines, with very different settings and very different dramatis personae. The timing, economy, even visual contrast are very impressive. There is scarcely a wasted moment or line in the film.

Traffic has nothing particularly new to say about the drug trade, or about the alleged War on Drugs. But it speaks powerfully, and creates a new vernacular. I actually liked Catherine Zeta-Jones quite a lot in this film. I try to be objective about her husband, and I fail. Surely there's a verisimilitude gap when you cast Michael Douglas as a pillar of justice and morality, even a flawed pillar? Throughout the picture he's aggressively, grumpily righteous.

Most of the other performances in the film are quite good, but the acting here is necessarily overshadowed by the story, and by the way it's told. I've always liked Soderbergh. If only one in ten talented independent directors graduate to big budget films without selling out, I'm glad he's the one.

 

CineScene, 2001