Movie Night - Before Night Falls
This flower is supposedly called Before Night Falls. I found it while google-ing for screencaps.
I wanted to watch a film about an artist and chatchien very enthusiastically offered up one of her favorite films for Movie Night: Before Night Falls. This film was directed by Julian Schnabel and stars Javier Bardem.
Shortcut: Just read the bold...
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Used by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 inaugural speech - Maryanne Williamson Quote
Before Night Falls is a work of art. At almost any moment you could freeze frame, make a screencap, blow it up, frame it and hang it on a wall for artwork. Every so often there are films like this that remind you that movies are moving PICTURES. Before Night Falls is a magnificent moving picture. One thing that struck me is that the visuals are so beautifully composed but the pace is so fast. I’m used to seeing beautiful pictures on display in Japanese films or even in Where the Wild Things Are in long languorous shots. This film keeps up the pace and the beauty.
Javier Bardem is an amazing actor. And he’s amazing at my very favorite thing - behavior. There are some actors who are just fascinating to watch because they just live in the moment, they behave naturally and spontaneously in the moment. He’s amazing at this. Also Chatchienne pointed out that he’s a physical communicator, a physical story teller. That you can tell what he’s feeling and thinking and saying even when you can’t understand his heavily accented English. Not all actors are like this. Olivier Martinez plays Bardem’s lover near the end of the film and he’s very stoic. You would need the dialog to tell you what’s going on with him. So between the cinematography, the director’s pace/vision and Javier embodying this guy, I was delighted.
Let me find a summary of the film to just copy and paste...Here we go...from Culture.com
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Venice Film Festival, Before Night Falls is a richly imagined journey into the life and writings of the brilliant Cuban author and exile Reinaldo Arenas. Directed and co-written by Julian Schnabel (basquiat (1996)), the film stars Spanish actor Javier Bardem (Live Flesh (1997), jamon, Jamon (1992)), whose eloquent, complex performance as Arenas earned him the 2000 Venice Film Festival's Volpi Cup for Best Actor.
Before Night Falls spans the whole of Arenas' life, from his rural childhood and his early embrace of the Revolution to the persecution he would later experience as a writer and homosexual in Castro's Cuba; from his departure from Cuba in the Mariel Harbor exodus of 1980 to his exile and death in the United States. It is a portrait of a man whose search for freedom - artistic, political, sexual - defied poverty, censorship, persecution, exile and death. Like Arenas' work, Before Night Falls combines passages of transporting imagination with urgent realism; in so doing, it embodies the creative ethos to which Arenas dedicated himself: transforming experience into unfettered expression.
http://www.culture.com/film/5384/before-night-falls/synopsis.phtml
And Internet Movie Database
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247196/plotsummary
The reason I wanted to watch a film about an artist is that lately the color has gone out of things for me. And artists, the way they see the world it’s just so fully saturated with SOMETHING. They just see the magic in things. Even artists that focus on pain like Frieda Kahlo translate that into something vivid and amazing and yeah magical and IMO essentially spiritual. This kind of outlook is kind of essential for me to keep the wind in my sails. Functionality doesn’t do it for me. I was expecting some type of escape and - with this film - a lot of ugliness. I didn’t really know anything about this artist or this time in history. I wasn’t sure I would want to be in his world/head. However, right from the opening menu I was just... ENGROSSED.
The menu was like a black and white short film in and of itself. By the time I actually started watching the film I was really excited.
I love the way the film just immerses the viewer in Reinaldo Arenas’ world with no explanations. The story was very intimately from Arenas’ POV. I quickly found out why it was Chat’s favorite film. She’s so great at catching details (in language and/or visuals) and receiving the story not only as it is told but as it is shown. There was so much visual storytelling going on. She was really pulling out themes too, especially regarding Arenas’ hole. *giggle* That sounds funny but at the beginning of the film he’s digging in this hole. It’s shaped like a grave and he’s in there, naked little boy, digging and there’s a glass bottle in there. It’s was a recurring motif through the film. Also rain, there’s a moment where he talks about the rain sounding like armies marching. That image recurs. My favorite was when Chat pointed out the dark clouds on the horizon. Fantastic. Those dark clouds transitioned the story from the fruitful, hopeful springtime of Arenas’ life into the dying fall and bleak winter of his career which was full of censorship and imprisonment. There’s lots of eating in the film which we analyzed. Boiled egg and broccoli never seemed as delicious as in this film. Yum!
I wanted to watch a film about an artist to get away from the bleak normalness of life. The electric lights and logic and taxes and politics and religion… the everyday sides of those things. But what was great about this film is that I felt fully immersed in the protagonist’s artist mind, so I got to experience the world through his beautiful eyes and words BUT his creativity is so entwined with the reality of everyday life. His creativity feeds off of the dirt and the horror and the poverty and the injustice and the sex and oppression and the dancing and the… it wasn’t an escape the way Frida Kahlo was in Julie Taymor’s film for example or even Tim Burton’s about Ed Wood LOL! With Kahlo … the colors and the abstraction … the distillation… rendered the world almost unrecognizable. It took the everyday world and horror and her chronic pain and made it this abstract riot of color and music and passion. So it was an escape. But this guy… he can escape in an old glass coke bottle. In rain. In the switch of a tranny’s hips there’s no… he’s not removed from reality at all… when he creates his magic. The ugliness, the grittiness is his magic carpet ride to the typewriter… it is his muse in a way.
He has this poem about a dirty faced child. “I am the dirty faced child that begs you for a quarter.” And he doesn’t idealize that child at all. “If in your hypocrisy you pat me on the head I will use that opportunity to pick your pocket and steal your wallet.” And yet somehow there is pathos and beauty… in his fierce honesty about that dirty faced child’s existence. He doesn’t apologize! Oh I’m going to cry just thinking about it. He never apologizes for who he is, for what he is. And for me it’s bigger than homosexuality. He’s this unique creature! And all around him people don’t know what to make of him or where he belongs. But he never questions that. He never lets the people around him define him. Not to go all hippy dippy and pseudo spiritual but that’s so GOD to me. Like… I really believe that we are created to be these unique creatures and not everyone is going to get you. You’ve got to just plow ahead with that essential calling in your core. When you start attacking that or stifling that to conform to something other humans impose on you… you start to die.
Anyway I loved that the film didn’t shy away from his homosexuality but it doesn’t exploit. I never felt that it was selling me something or idealizing him as some sort of gay hero. It just felt honest. I thought it dealt with his sexuality honestly but also elegantly. It didn’t seem gaudy not even when Tranny Johnny showed up. My jaw dropped! It’s a period film but even that is so subtle and so grounded in recognizable reality. Sometimes period can be used to heighten a setting and provide a kind of escape. The director manages to preserve the charm of this time period to a certain degree while still being true to the not so charming aspects of the setting. That’s what’s amazing about this artist and perhaps the director as well. He is inspired by all of reality. It’s all material for him, not just the secrets or the darkness, or the pain or the… some artists you feel that you are seeing the world through a filter that highlights one area while low lighting others. But with this guy it… he doesn’t discriminate. His feet are on the ground. It’s just a masterful film.
One of my favorite things that randomly popped into my head just now was the way that he would write poetry all over the place as a child. He would carve it into trees. And later in the film he’s on the run and he’s putting pieces of paper all over the place, under rocks and stuff. There was something I loved about that. Like the whole world is his poetry tablet. Also, his connection to nature was just magical. You could just see the elements feeding him. At the end, living in New York he even had a few plants around him for spiritual nourishment. The snow moment on the top of the bus or car or whatever was great too. Freedom! My favorite line was during a GOTCHA moment. He’s been discovered. This guard in jail has his book that was banned but somehow it had been smuggled out of Cuba and it was published in France. And there’s all the tension - what is he gonna do? Is he gonna deny writing the book? How is he going to get out of this? All this fear I was feeling even as I was so glad that his book got published. And he thinks, I can’t remember the exact quote… something like, “This book was the only evidence that I was still alive.” I loved that! I loved that. Beautiful film. What a guy. How true to his art he was. I cried twice but it was more inspiring than sad. I wanna read more of this guy's poetry.
So instead of stealing screencaps and crediting people I’m just going to link you to DVD Beaver. I didn’t read his review of the DVD but he has a few caps of the DVD menu so you can see how beautiful it is. You can’t hear the music or the Spanish or see the montage in motion but maybe you’ll get an idea of why I went all dramatic cat over it. Also near the bottom there are screencaps! I think you’ll get to see the broccoli and egg meal with looming gloomy clouds, Javier with a book and Johnny Depp in one of his two roles in the film.
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview6/beforenigtfalls.htm
And here’s one final cap of the rain! Thanks to http://benpalmeractor.files.wordpress.com
Finally just for you Chatchienne I’m posting a link to a LJ devoted to Javier Bardem. This page has caps of him using his body to tell the story in Before Night Falls and some other film with Penelope Cruz. Are they married now?
http://javier-bardem.livejournal.com/8037.html
Did you ever see Eat, Pray, Love? He was the best thing about that film. I want to watch it right now just to see him. <3 Actually... Javier, the food and Viola Davis. I adore her. Those were the best things. Julia made it all easier to swallow... it's her gift.