Before Night Falls

Before Night Falls (2000) is an American biographical drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Julian Schnabel. Javier Bardem plays Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas across several decades — from a rural childhood in poverty, through the literary circles of Havana, to imprisonment, exile and New York. Bardem took the Silver Lion at Venice for the performance, and a Golden Globe nomination followed.

Arenas made enemies on two fronts: the Cuban state, which treated his homosexuality as a crime and banned his manuscripts, and the émigré community that wasn't always sure what to do with him either. The film follows his life from the excitement of the early revolutionary years through prison, a clandestine escape from the island, and the years in America where he finished his memoir before dying in 1990. Johnny Depp and Sean Penn appear in small, sharply drawn supporting roles.

Schnabel shoots the way he paints — composition and colour do as much work as dialogue. The result is less a suffering-biography than a study of what it takes to keep writing when everything is set against it. Stream Before Night Falls (2000) online on iFILM.