Cynthia Grenier. WorldNetDaily.com.
Saturday March 24.
Odds make it unlikely in the extreme that Spanish actor Javier Bardem is
going to come away Sunday night with the Oscar for Best Actor. At this point,
we're facing a toss-up between Russell Crowe or Tom Hanks for that honor:
Gladiator vs. desert island FedEx man, if you will.
But there is something very interesting -- possibly even quite significant
-- about Bardem's even being nominated for one of these treasured awards. For
starters, he's a Spaniard and indeed, very few foreign actors are nominated for
such a major prize. Second, the film in which he plays the lead -- "Before
Night Falls" -- received not a single other nomination, even in the most
minor category. Third, the director, Julian Schnabel, is primarily an artist --
a fellow who paints pictures. Schnabel's canvases go for many hundred-thousand
dollars apiece. (A few years back, he would glue dinner plates to a canvas and
then break the plates or glue broken pieces to the canvas -- I don't remember
which -- then would daub some color on the result. You get the idea.)
In any event, in visual and directorial terms, Schnabel's film is
disconnected, choppy, and often murky. What makes the film eminently worthy of
our attention is that, pitiful as it may be as a work of cinema art, it attempts
to bring to the screen the autobiography of distinguished Cuban poet and author
Reinaldo Arenas, who died of suicide at 47 in Manhattan.
Arenas was a homosexual, and the lot of homosexuals in Fidel Castro's Cuba
was not a happy one. Arenas who was 15 when Castro was received in triumph in
Havana, in January 1959, knew all the ins and outs of homosexual life from that
of poor peasants to one or two high-ranking aides of Castro protected by their
positions. He was also a gifted writer. Thwarted from having his novels
published in his own country, he wound up in the dread El Moro prison for
several years for having smuggled his manuscripts abroad, where they were
published to considerable praise.
Eventually Arenas was able to get to the United States during the Mariel
boatlift, Castro being eager to deport criminals and enemies of the state, such
as homosexuals.
Life was not that welcoming Arenas discovered. "I remember that, after
I arrived in the United States, a Cuban exile who lived in Washington said to
me: 'Don't ever quarrel with the left.' For people like him, to attack Castro's
government was to fight against the left. But after twenty years of repression,
how could I keep silent about those crimes? On the other hand, I never
considered myself as belonging to the 'left' or to the 'right,' nor do I want to
be included under any opportunistic or political label. I tell my truth, as does
the Jew who has suffered racism, or the Russian who has been in the Gulag or any
human being who has eyes to see the way things really are. I scream, therefore I
exist."
Wonder of wonders. The Washington Post's columnist (March 20) Richard Cohen
-- a writer certainly always leaning more leftwards than otherwise -- saw the
film, read Arenas' book freshly issued in paperback and came away to write a
downright surprising column convinced now by Arenas of the evil Castro has
exercised over the lives of Cubans all these years. Cohen even goes so far as to
cite the figures from Freedom House rating Castro's regime as being even more
repressive than China's. (Cuba gets a 7.7; China, 7.6.)
Does this mark one man's eyes suddenly opening to the truth -- or can it be
a small but vital straw in the cultural wind? Did Hollywood, whose members
certainly receive royal treatment whenever one or more of their number gets to
Cuba, suddenly feel in the face of this film showing just what cruel and brutal
treatment is meted out to homosexuals that being pro-Castro today was, well,
perhaps not fashionable anymore? Not cool perhaps?
Cynthia Grenier, an international film and theater critic, is the former
Life editor of the Washington Times and acted as senior editor at The World &
I, a national monthly magazine, for six years.
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