By Kristin Hohenadel.
The New York Times. March 4,
2001
BARCELONA, Spain -- TO prepare for the role of the Cuban writer Reinaldo
Arenas, the Spanish actor Javier Bardem learned to walk his walk, to speak with
his Cuban accent, to kiss a man as if he meant it. And on a hot Mexican
afternoon a week before shooting began, he sat himself down to learn how to
type.
Tapping out a two-fingered message — "Help me" — he
began a running letter to Arenas himself, trying to slip into the author's
writerly heart.
"I didn't get the point when I was reading Reinaldo's work or trying to
understand the role, why a person needs to write," Mr. Bardem said,
speaking in thickly accented English. "What he's looking for when he
writes? Who was he writing to when he was saying `I'm in pain,' `I write because
I need revenge' or whatever? To himself, to God, to the audience? What's he
trying to do? I started writing poems and letters every day, telling him my
experience, asking him for help. When I'm writing in the movie, I'm writing to
him."
Mr. Bardem's performance in Julian Schnabel's "Before Night Falls,"
based largely on the memoir that the AIDS-ravaged Arenas dictated in New York
City before he committed suicide in 1990 at the age of 47, has not only won him
an Oscar nomination for best actor but made him the first Spanish actor ever
nominated.
Mr. Bardem, 32, has made some two dozen films in Spain. He was first noticed
there in Bigas Luna's 1992 film "Jamón, Jamón" and
became known in the United States for his role in Pedro Almodóvar's "Live
Flesh" (1997), in which he played a paraplegic policeman. But his role in "Before
Night Falls" — his second English- language film — generated an
international buzz and earned him a nomination for a Golden Globe and the best
actor prize at the Venice Film Festival last September.
The noise became particularly loud in Spain four days after the Oscar
nomination. Cabdrivers shouted from their windows, "Go for the Oscar!"
Fans mobbed Mr. Bardem on the street; paparazzi waited on his doorstep in
Madrid; and King Juan Carlos invited him to dinner.
Which brings us on a sleepy Saturday afternoon to his hide-out, a borrowed
doctor's office in Barcelona. Mr. Bardem has never courted fame in his own
country, and he has turned down commercial propositions like Robert Carlyle's
bad-guy role in the James Bond movie "The World Is Not Enough." He was
troubled by all the excitement. "It's like I'm playing soccer in the second
division, and someone hires me and puts me in the first league, no?"
Of the other nominees, he said: "These actors are people that I've
watched on tapes so I could learn to act. When I was doing Arenas dying of AIDS
at the end of `Before Night Falls,' I watched `Philadelphia' 13 or 14 times,
because I thought Tom Hanks was making good choices. And here I am nominated
next to him. Russell Crowe, Ed Harris and Geoffrey Rush are magnificent, and for
me to be chosen to be one of them is like a dream."
If that sounded like a rough draft for an acceptance speech, Mr. Bardem was
quick to point out the horror of his post-nomination press conference. "It
was one of the worst moments in my life to be talking in front of 300
journalists about me, not about a movie," he said. "It was the first
time I've done that. I'm trying to stay calm. I'm being treated like the great
white hope by my country. And this great imperialistic world called the United
States has made us believe that Oscar is the most important thing in the world
for an actor — so much that even I do think so. But if you think about it
for five minutes you realize it cannot be the most important thing."
Mr. Bardem's career has been marked by his ability to play a junkie or a cop
with equal skill. "After the success of `Jamón, Jamón,'
Javier was offered lots of very similar roles," said Mr. Almodóvar
in a telephone interview. "The very tough, very Spanish kind of guy, but he
really never again played that same type of role." Mr. Almodóvar
said that while Mr. Bardem emotionally and physically transforms himself for
each role — he dyed his black hair auburn and lost 25 pounds for this one —
"there's a certain tenderness that is captured by the camera in all his
performances, and a kind of masculine nobility that appears in all his
characters."
Mr. Schnabel had originally cast Benicio Del Toro to play Arenas and Mr.
Bardem to play Lázaro Gómez Carriles, a friend and fellow Cuban
refugee who was with Arenas during his exile in the United States, where Arenas
had escaped persecution for his homosexuality and for smuggling his anti- Castro
literature outside Cuba.
"I watched his movies, because I wanted to see who was this guy who was
going to play me," said Mr. Carriles, who wrote the script with Mr.
Schnabel and Cunningham O'Keefe, in a telephone interview from New York. "I
thought he was a great actor, but my part was small. And from the moment I saw
Javier, he looked so much like Reinaldo."
Ultimately, Mr. Del Toro dropped out and Mr. Bardem ended up with the role
of Arenas. At Mr. Schnabel's urging, he read Arenas's writing and went to Cuba
for three weeks, talking to people who had known Arenas and warming to the idea
of telling his story.
"When I read his books I was feeling his pain — he was an
emotional person telling me his truth. I thought I can do this role, because he
is not a thinker, he's a person who really entertains through an emotional
experience. And I'm trying to be that kind of actor."
Mr. Bardem said it was hard to convey those emotions in a foreign language
(he has since finished shooting John Malkovich's directorial debut, "The
Dancer Upstairs," also in English). "In Spain I have my background, my
language, but this movie in English with a foreign crew playing a foreign
character — I don't have any tricks."
But he overcame his apprehension with hard work. "Javier has become a
specialist in doing roles which are very far from his own personality," Mr.
Almodóvar said. "It seems that he is interested in roles where the
preparation takes almost as long as the shooting of the film. He really delves
into a character very deeply."
Mr. Bardem said that while he was too shy to ask Mr. Schnabel why he offered
him the part, he never doubted the director's unwavering confidence. "Julian
is really in touch with his emotions," Mr. Bardem said, "and you feel
sometimes overwhelmed by his love. That's the first time that happened to me. I
guess love is trust in a way, and he trusted me 100 percent. You feel
responsible for that."
MR. BARDEM said he had a "treasure" in Mr. Carriles, who guided
his first portrayal of a real person. "He helped me a lot, but in a way I
didn't want to use him, because I knew that it was not easy for him," Mr.
Bardem said. "So I would go to him when I had a specific question. He would
tell me what he believed, but at the end he would say, `Don't worry about it,
you are Reinaldo, he chose you, you have to believe that. You're Reinaldo.' "
Mr. Bardem watched documentary footage of Arenas, and Mr. Carriles gave him
audiotapes of Arenas, who was too ill to sit at a typewriter, dictating "Before
Night Falls." Mr. Carriles also helped teach him how to walk like his old
friend. "Reinaldo not only had this little country walk," Mr. Carriles
said, "but he had this little gay walk too. When Javier turned his back to
me, for a moment I thought it was Reinaldo. For almost a year, here is Reinaldo,
and I could talk to him again. Then, after he finished the movie, he became
Javier Bardem again, and I felt kind of sad, kind of betrayed — like he had
been teasing me."
To hear Mr. Bardem, however, you'd think they had gotten the wrong guy. "When
I first saw the movie, I almost killed myself," he said. "I spent six
months of my life doing it, so I was expecting more. I look at myself, and I see
a Spanish person who's trying to be understood by an English-speaking audience
and is putting a lot of energy in that, instead of into expressing in a free way
and feeling comfortable."
But if Mr. Bardem is quick to say that what he sees in the mirror is a shy,
broken-nosed hypochondriac, the rest of the world has a more flattering take. In
a telephone interview from St. Moritz, Switzerland, Mr. Schnabel said that Mr.
Bardem had won his nomination the hard way. He "didn't get nominated
because he had friends at the academy," the director said.
"He earned this nomination," he added "because other actors
look at this and they see one of those performances that you kind of come across
once in a lifetime."
Mr. Malkovich said in a recent interview that Mr. Bardem was "the best
actor in Europe." In Interview magazine, Dennis Hopper called his work "the
best performance of the year and perhaps many years."
Mr. Bardem, an earnest wrinkle forming on his brow, said he found all the
attention baffling. "There are some parts of this movie that I like very
much, that I said, `Javier, you got it, that's Reinaldo,' " he said. "But
there's some other parts where I don't believe what I'm watching. I'm not
playing the humble boy."
Mr. Bardem said he would like to get started on a new role but hadn't found
anything worth taking on. Besides, he was having a hard time concentrating on
anything but making it to March 25.
Mr. Almodóvar suggested that Mr. Bardem wait "until everything
has settled down" and refuse all offers for the next three months: "In
spite of being so young, Javier really has a grip on things. He doesn't really
want to conquer the American market and become a movie star."
But Mr. Bardem conceded that he feels lost without an assignment: "Sometimes
I say to myself, what are you doing in this absurd job? Why don't you go to
Africa and help people? But I cannot help people, because I am hypochondriac. I
don't know how to drive a car. The only thing I can do is act, but it's not
something I even feel comfortable doing. It costs me a lot, because I'm a shy
person, even if I look the contrary. I want to act because I don't know how to
do anything else. But don't call me actor. I'm just a worker. I am an
entertainer. Don't please say that what I am doing is art."
In a final act of deflection, he explained away all this Oscar business by
blaming Arenas: "I don't believe in God," he said. "But I do
believe in guardian angels. He chose me for his movie. This is his revenge —
of being heard in front of a huge audience, which he was not able to do before.
That's why I'm getting all this recognition."
Kristin Hohenadel, who is based in Paris, writes about film.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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