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starring: Javier Bardem, Johnny Depp, Michael Wincott, Hector Babenco, Sean Penn
List Price: $19.98Amazon.com's Price: $13.99 You Save: $5.99 (30%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 9780780634930
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0780634934
Label: New Line Home Video
Manufacturer: New Line Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Line Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: May 22, 2001
Running Time: 133 minutes
Sales Rank: 10187
Studio: New Line Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2000
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
An incredible journey through the life and work of the late cuban poet reinaldo arenas whose courageous fight for personal expression defied censorship and persecution. Special features: subtitles in english spanish and french theatrical trailer cast and crew filmographies and much more. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 08/29/2006 Starring: Javier Bardem Sean Penn Run time: 125 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com:
Based on the posthumously published memoir by Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls is artist-director Julian Schnabel's second exercise in artist biography, but where Schnabel's earlier film Basquiat was relatively conventional, this film is bolder in both style and execution. Schnabel is perhaps too enamored of his subject as a noble martyr, lending the film a somewhat inflated sense of importance. Still, it's rare to see an artist's life and work so elegantly interwoven, and Before Night Falls uses all of Arenas's life as its canvas, from impoverished youth to lively gay freedom in mid-1950's Cuba; imprisonment during Castro's antigay regime; and to New York City in 1980, followed by Arenas's battle with AIDS and subsequent suicide (depicted here as assisted) in 1990.
Through these extreme rises and falls, Arenas is always writing, his typewriter his most faithful lover and weapon (by way of smuggled manuscripts) against the dark forces that surround him. As Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, Arenas is 'a serious actor's dream role: to be a gay Jesus in a modern Passion Play,' and Javier Bardem--the first Spanish actor to receive an Oscar nomination--inhabits the role with subtle ferocity, charting this emotional odyssey with outer reserve but blazing infernos of internal passion. And while Schnabel suffers from a hyperactive camera, there's poetry here--visual, dramatic, and literal--and vibrant humor to temper the deep tragedy of Arenas's life. Schnabel also uses his actor friends to good advantage: a nearly unrecognizable Sean Penn adds an ironic touch to his brief appearance as a peasant, and Johnny Depp is both funny and fearsome in dual roles as a drag queen and vicious army interrogator. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Struggle against repression
This is an artistic and visually bold film about the life of a gay talented poet and writer in the time of the Cuban Revolution. Javier Bardem is excellent as poet Reinaldo Arenas, a peasant child who becomes one of Cuba's great writers. The film takes us from the first days of the Cuban revolution to the dark days of totalitarian repression of all sexuality and creativity that is not condoned by the state.
This is an excellent film, visually compelling with a narrative flow that is ... Read More
Rating: - Bardem's masterclass performance helps reign in the incoherencies...
I admit to knowing nothing about poet Reinaldo Arenas before sitting down to watch `Before Night Falls'. In fact, the only reason I had decided to give this a try in the first place was all the hype heaped upon Bardem's Oscar nominated performance. At the time of my first viewing I was less than impressed. Sure, it was a decent movie and I was wholly blown away by Bardem's heartbreaking performance, but in the end it just was not my cup of tea. Recently I decided to revisit this film and upon ... Read More
Rating: - Fighting for Freedom
Powerful screenplay based on the autobiography of the exiled Cuban author, Reinaldo Arenas.
Arenas was a gay Cuban author and poet who was persecuted by the Castro regime and fled Cuba in 1980 (the Mariel Boat-lift) and ended up in New York City, where he continued to write and rail against the Communists. In 1990, stricken with AIDS and without health insurance, he committed suicide with drugs and alcohol. It's a painful and heart-wrenching story, but the acting is superb and there ... Read More
Rating: - An excellent film about Cuba under Fidel and his oppression of intellectuals
This film gives the viewer an insight into Castro's take over of Cuba. The acting is superb. It is a look into the life of a gay cuban writer from birth to death and his stuggle as an artist in a society where free thought and speech are forbidden. The film also shows the suffering of a homosexual as an outcast in that society. Gives the viewer an insight into human rights issues in Cuba after the revolution and a "big brother" regime is instituted. The cameo's by Johnny Depp and Sean Penn are amazing. ... Read More
Rating: - Thank you
Thank you for sendin g this movie so fast. It was a great movie and Johnny Depp looks good as a blonde woman.
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