Movie wins plaudits, but protesters say depiction of persecuted gay
artist plays into hands of CIA
Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent. Monday May 7, 2001.
The Guardian
Cuba sees itself as the progressive David to the United States' reactionary
Goliath, but a film about its most outrageous writer has sparked a row by
portraying the revolution's past as repressive and homophobic.
Before Night Falls, based on the autobiography dictated by Reinaldo Arenas
as he lay dying of Aids in a squalid New York apartment 11 years ago, is accused
of playing into the hands of the CIA by presenting a "distorted picture".
A gala charity screening during the London Human Rights Watch film festival
was picketed, and there are plans for protests outside cinemas when the film
goes on release in Britain next month.
In the US, the film's star, Spanish actor Javier Bardem, was nominated for
an Oscar for his portrayal of Arenas. But the film has been condemned by both
opponents and supporters of the Communist regime run by Fidel Castro, and by
some gay activists.
The row has been spiced by Arenas's colourful exploits: he claimed to have
had sex with 5,000 men by the time he was 25. The film, which also stars Johnny
Depp, tells how he fell foul of the authorities and ended up being imprisoned
for his flamboyant sexuality.
A poet who was a local publishing sensation by the time he was 20, Arenas
was initially a darling of the revolution that freed Cuba in 1959. But, as the
authorities tried to clean up the remnants of Havana's gigantic sex tourism
trade, his boasts of sex with a variety of farmyard animals during his bucolic
rural childhood did not go down well. But it was his blithe disregard for the
age of consent that really landed him in trouble.
After being told off for smuggling a manuscript to Paris in 1968 instead of
submitting it to the Union of Artists and Writers, Arenas decided to use sex as
his weapon of protest.
The film's director, Julian Schnabel, said he wanted to show what happened
when the "wild free spirit of an artist" came in conflict with a
totalitarian system. "I am not of the left or the right, I am not gay or a
Cuban, I simply wanted to make a film about an artist whose work and life
combined the more brutal aspects of his nature as well as the more beautiful.
His gift both blessed and cursed him."
However, the film's critics claim Schnabel's damning indictment of the 1970s
when some of Cuba's writers and artists were kicked out of jobs in theatres and
universities for being gay, plays into the hands of American bigots and
Castro-phobes who want to justify the United States' continuing illegal blockade
of the island.
Steve Williamson, of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, picketed the film in
London five weeks ago. He said it painted a pantomime picture of Castro as the
homophobic baddie when "the real story is much more complicated".
An expert on Arenas's work, Dr Williamson said the film "rehashes a
very old, distorted story" and claimed the poet was delusional, if not
suffering from outright dementia, when he wrote Before Night Falls during the
final stages of Aids.
"Arenas was an amazing person, and a great magical realist. His life
was fantastic in every way. He undoubtedly suffered because of what happened
during that period in Cuba, which was wrong; but if you elevate what he wrote
and what the film presents as an actual record of events, you are falsifying
history.
"If Arenas even did one third of what he claims to have done in his
book, he would have been locked up for life in any other country. The man was
outrageous. His prison sentence was basically for having sex with young boys."
He added: "Cuba has changed dramatically since then, it is by far the
most progressive country in Latin America as regards gay rights... Everyone
there recognises that mistakes were made - very big mistakes, in fact. There
were camps for about 18 months in the 1960s for those who refused to do military
service, and it is true that many gay and transvestite prostitutes were sent
there.
"Cuba had many deep social problems to cope with after the revolution,
and no one is pretending there aren't still other human rights issues in Cuba
today. But the Cubans have come to terms with gay issues in an unprecedented
way."
This view is shared by Amnesty International, which says Cuba now has quite
a good record on gay rights.
Schnabel has a more acid view of Cuba. Though he concedes that Arenas was a
child of the revolution, he points out that only one of his books was ever
allowed to be published on the island.
However, he has no illusions as to how Arenas also suffered when he arrived
in the US in 1980. Cuba might have been hell, Arenas joked, but having to live
with the far right anti-Castro Cubans in Florida was purgatory.
For Schnabel, Castro is nothing short of a dictator, who as the years go by "becomes
more like that bum Batista that he replaced". He added: "I didn't mean
to make a political film, but I guess I did.
"It's not Castro that's the enemy though.
"It's any totalitarian state and any situation where people don't have
rights.
"The success of the revolution would have been if Castro had given the
country to the people that he educated, and gave them free elections.
"I certainly don't think that Cuba should become a colony of the US."
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