Metacritic reviews

This powerful, lyrical meditation on Arenas's life achieves a kind of hallucinatory urgency as it leaps and twists through his life.

With Before Night Falls, Schnabel has moved to an entirely new plane of cinematic achievement.

It's huge and bewildering and it hurts to watch, but it hurts so good it's gorgeous.

A thoughtful, bittersweet film biography of the Cuban writer that captures both his irrepressible spirit and his sometimes overwhelming melancholy.

There is a little something of the spoiled masochist about Arenas. One would not say he seeks misery, but he wears it like a badge of honor, and we can see his mistakes approaching before he does. This is not a weakness in the film but one of its intriguing strengths

This is an art film in the true sense of the term, engaging the mind, senses and emotions in a way that only movies at their best can do.

A dreamy, passionate ode to freedom -- of thought, of expression, of every person's innate right to simply be.

This is a sad, passionate, beautifully wrought story, and Bardem's portrait of Arenas is at once daring and deeply moving.

Bardem's performance is simply shattering.

Plays like a labor of love.