Javier Bardem is a god. He has a peculiar profile, and a peculiar voice (he could speak Spanish to me all day though), but I don't love him for his Oscar winning performance in No Country for Old Men (2007), Oh no, the reason for my affections come from Before Night Falls (2000). The only reason I picked it up was because Johnny Depp was dressed in drag on the back of the movie jacket (a film I had never heard of yet, containing my beloved Johnny whose birthday was yesterday as well:)
The movie is a biopic of writer, poet, and playwrite Reinaldo Arenas. Born in Cuba in the 40s, Reinaldo develops a boyhood flare for poetry (and flare for his friend Carlos). After being condemmned by his grandfather for his "gift" of writing, Reinaldo runs away to join the rebels. When the gunshots end, he goes to school, finds an apartment and starts work in a library. He enters a story of his in a contest and ends up with an honorable mention. However, his talent gets him noticed by a wealthy publisher who gives him a book deal for his first novel, about his mother. The backdrop is 60, 70, and 80s Cuba, when being homosexual was an epidemic and a capitalist a death sentence. Reinaldo's writing is censored because it could be construed as propaganda, and so he smuggles his writing to France and other places in Europe. He ends up publishing seven novels overseas before the 1980s and even though the novels come with critical acclaim, he is unable to leave his native Cuba and receive any of the profits or success until much later.
Johnny Depp only appears briefly as Bon bon, a flamboyant cross-dressing inmate (there is a nice bare butt shot in one of his outfits) with a flare for smuggling things in his rectum (he smuggles an entire novel in seven different stages for Reinaldo to France), and Lt. Victor, an attractive officer at a Cuban jail where Reinaldo is detained. The best line in this scene? Johnny Depp stands beside Reinaldo who is siting down in a chair and he puts his arm around him almost hugging him. Reinaldo says, "His beautiful member was so close to my face, I thought I might faint." I don't want to say how it ends, but it is sad beautiful, Javier is captivating, the script is phenomenal (Julian Schnabel), and best of all, Johnny Depp plays two characters!
Any aspiring writers should watch this movie. It will make you think of what an urge and passion it is to want to write. Reinaldo was jailed, beaten, held at gunpoint, and yet throughout the movie he continues to ask for paper and a pen (that was one of the nicest scripting details I appreciated). One of the characters (played by the also wonderful Olivier Martinez) asks Reinaldo why he writes, and he says, "for revenge." I sat up at that moment, and I thought, cheesy as it sounds, I get it. The ultimate weapon that a homosexual Cuban revolutionary from the country can use is the stout and elegant language filled with ammo (symbols, metaphors, allusions) to tell his story. unreal man.
We can only tell what we know. So true.
If you aren't a writer, you should watch this movie anyhow. The colours and textures of the film, browns and bright greens, lend to beautiful cinematography...and (ahem) there are a lot of hot men in the film, who make out with each other (if that is your bag).
