Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

"Before night falls" is one of the last films before Johnny Depp turned into a real pop star and as they say "sold out". I know that selling out isn`t that easy to identify in case of one being an actor loved by billions of teens all over the world, but there`s no doubt htat "Before Night Falls" isn`t a mainstream movie. First, it`s directed by someone named Julian Schnabel - a director I don`t know nothing about. Then comes the story line which isn`t a story really but the life and death of the cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas (played by Javier Bardem who got an Oscar nomination for this role and who later appeared as the main star in "Mar ardento". Reinaldo Arenas was a lonely boy from a poor cuban family who went to join the revolution at the age of 13-14. Later on he became a writer and a homosexual and he wasn`t particulary popular in Cuba for various reasons. He spent two years in prison and stay alive by writing letters to the loved ones of other convicts (for they learned to know that he could write). When the possibility arose he fleed from Cuba to the States where he didn`t get much recognition either and where he died of AIDS in 1990. That would be the life of Reinaldo Arenas. As for Johhny Depp, his role isn`t very big. At first we see him as a transsexual who`s able to carry lots of stuff in his rectum, in order to deliver it to a safe place. Later on we learn to know that he`s in fact leutinant Victor and that he didn`t deliver Arenas`s novel to no other place than his own office. Lt. Victor forces Arenas to sign a paper where he denies all his life until now and admits that he has to change and that he has sinned (blah blah). Meanwhile the only thing Arenas can think of is Johnny Depp`s body and he imagines how the leutinant forces him to suck his gun (revolver that is). The film was not made for the viewer`s fun, of course, but mostly to tell the tale of an untrivial character that could eventually become a world wide sensation but didn`t.