Bent

Plot synopsis:
Max (Clive Owen) is a promiscuous gay man living in 1930s Berlin. He is at odds with his wealthy family because of his homosexuality. One evening, much to the resentment of his boyfriend, Rudy (Brian Webber II), Max brings home a handsome SA man (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Unfortunately, he does so on the Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler ordered the assassination of upper echelon SA corps. The Sturmabteilung man is discovered and killed by SS men in Max and Rudy's apartment, and the two have to flee Berlin.
Max's Uncle Freddie (Ian McKellen) has organised new papers for Max, but Max refuses to leave his boyfriend behind. As a result, Max and Rudy are found and arrested by the Gestapo and put on a train headed for Dachau. On the train, Rudy is brutally beaten to death by the guards. As Rudy calls out to Max when he is taken away, Max lies to the guards, denying he is gay. In the camp, Max falls in love with Horst (Lothaire Bluteau), who shows him the dignity that lies in acknowledging one's beliefs. After Horst's death, Max finds the courage to be true to himself, and takes his own life.

Tags: murder, flashback, insanity, romantic, sadist, sentimental

Review:
When Martin Sherman's play first appeared (with Ian McKellen as Max and Tom Bell as Horst) it caused outrage and much discussion with its sympathetic and frank treatment of forbidden love in the age of the SS.Here it has undergone a few changes but retains its stark power.
Clive Owen (probably not my first choice for the role) plays Max, the homosexual who pretends to be a Jew so he is not at the bottom of the pecking order of prisoners.
Brian Webber plays his intellectual lover Rudy with some class and it is a brief but touching performance.Lothaire Bluteau, who I had only seen before in 'Jesus of Montreal', was brilliant in the role of Horst, the prisoner with the pink triangle who awakens Max again from his imprisoned desires.
There are quiet and intense scenes between the two that are almost unbearably moving to watch, and are done within this film extremely well.Elsewhere in the cast, Ian McKellen himself plays Uncle Freddie (but those of us who saw him as Max would love to have seen that portrayal immortalised on screen), while Mick Jagger is surprisingly good as Greta (a role which could easily be played wrong but he's spot on).This play/film is intended to make its audience confront their prejudices, to shock, move, and inspire them.
Only half way through this film did I remember having seen a small theatre production of the play in Los Angeles a dozen years ago.
I kept thinking: "Hey, how can they keep blaming Hitler, when he was not there ordering the guards to torture and ENJOY hurting people like that?"  Powerful film!.
Clive Owen plays Max, a loose, carefree, and cowardly playboy who is caught by Nazis along with his gay partner and shipped off to the Dachau concentration camp to do hard labor.
But he meets a member of the pink triangle named Horst who he befriends and begins developing feelings for as they work day after day moving rocks from one place to another.
One viewer may realize this very quickly upon watching this movie as the film does feel quite staged.
In one powerful scene, that I have to admit I watched over and over about five times, during one of Max and Horst's (main stars) rock moving extravaganza's, they are allowed a three minute rest period while working a twelve hour shift.
It is a must see for everyone, no matter what the content of the movie - gays, murder, sex, SS men, Hitler's BS , concentration camps.
You have to watch this movie with an open heart and mind to actually feel for these people, not just because they were two gay men in love and pain, because they were human beings first and foremost.
I was extremely moved by this picture; it has the wonderful, heart-wrenching quality that only a great play can produce, mixed with a very compelling lead actor and fabulous supporting cast.Clive Owen as Max was a wake-up call; at the end you may be asking yourself, "where can I see more of this actor??".
He adds that special charm that we expect from his performances, no matter how small the role.This movie requires an open mind, and the ability to not deny the reality of horrific, true events of the past.
This tough-going drama doesn't delve too deeply into the Party's initial conflict over homosexuality, but it does touch on the labeling of gay men with the Pink Triangle, making them perhaps even more reviled than the Jews (Clive Owen picks the yellow Star of David symbol over the triangle, figuring being a Jew might actually help him survive).
Adapted from the controversial play, the last act has perhaps more going on than is actually revealed, and the viewer may either feel the movie loses its energy and soul during this portion or that it is successful on an entirely different level.
Bravo to Clive Owen and Lothaire Bluteau, who despite their lack of character development command viewer interest at a consistent and affecting level.It's no masterpiece for sure, but so what..."Bent" rocks.
Bent was a movie i was once familiar with but have never seen due to it's NC-17 rating but i caught the R rated version and it was a good film.
Overall if you can stand some slowness and some bizarreness ( Mick Jaggar is in drag and sings all in the first five mins.) Bent is a film well worth watching.
The casting is superb from Clive Owen, Jude Law, and Ian McKellan and especially entertaining was the performance of Mick Jagger.
Wow. I'm not going to give anything away here, but it really is one of the most touching and beautiful films i have ever seen.The story is so touching and is an emotional roller-coaster, but it is written so superbly, that you feel you are experiencing exactly what all the characters feel.
Obviously the action itself is very harrowing and extremely brutal, but the way that the train scenes are edited together is superb, and you feel the claustrophobia and stress that they are feeling.The ending of the piece really distressed me, but it is so moving that no film has ever moved me the way this did.Wow..
BENT  starts off bizarrely with transvestites parading around one of which is Sir Mick Jagger so I was expecting a sort of camp version of CABARET , but explicit scenes of gay sex followed and after that the film descended into a very pretentious and obvioulsy stage based drama where Clive Owen looks grim faced and keeps repeating " This can`t be happening " over and over again .
This journey is filled with seductive images and feelings-feelings that we tend to forget until we are reminded that life can change on a dime-There is a scene on the way to Dachau where the Max (Clive Owen) has to denounce knowing his friend..." He is not my friend".....reminicient of Judas denying Jesus....was it to save himself or his friend....the answer comes when one cannot no longer deny who you are- facing your truth brings-reclaiming your dignity-Max's final journey.Lothair (Jesus of Montreal) and a new-comer, Jude Law (The Talent Mr. Ripley) add to make up a fine cast.Splendid job by all-especially Mr.Clive Owen.Take the journey -it's worth your time..
Martin Sherman's play "Bent" has been much-praised since its first staging starring Sir Ian McKellen, and Mathias's film builds on this success.
Clive Owen and Lothaire Bluteau are astounding in this film based on the 'Night of the Long Knives', where so-called homosexuals were killed or sent to work camps.The film begins with the wonderfully decadent Berlin nightclubs: Greta's club.
I was expecting some really good things from it; as a gay guy looking for "gay entertainment," I highly dislike movies that assume gay people must want to see lots of sex, or stories about AIDs. I figured this would be something far different from that kind of garbage.To say I was disappointed would be an understatement; it's a bad sign when I wished the SS would just shoot the main character and make it a movie about his boyfriend instead!
Portraying a gay man (Clive Owen) in Nazi Germany pretending to be Jewish and meeting another gay man in Dachau, the movie never really develops anything as much as it could.
Mr. Bluteau wears the "Pink Triangle" identifying him as a homosexual, which is considered an especially low form of human life, by the Nazis.
At the concentration camp, prisoners Owen and Bluteau fall in love; but, they must avoid any physical contact.The opening club/orgy sequence is presented in a disjointed, confusing fashion.
Director Sean Mathias and supporting actor Webber make excellent first impressions; it's strange to see so little work (film credits) immediately followed this production.This film version of Martin Sherman's "forbidden" love story is far from perfect; but, it's still quite captivating.
The film's non-physical sex scene, performed at the concentration camp, is extremely touching.
******* Bent (1997) Sean Mathias ~ Clive Owen, Lothaire Bluteau, Mick Jagger.
Not all of the acting is brilliant, but Clive Owen is good, and cameos from Mick Jagger and Ian McKellen are rewarding..
In fact sexuality as a form of repression has not ever been better displayed on screen than in Bent.But Owen learns about gay pride from another prisoner, Lothaire Bluteau who wears the pink triangle in defiance.
I don't mean to sound melodramatic - I didn't live through the concentration camps and I didn't even have that bad of a coming out - but, I couldn't help feeling like I'd been through all of this in my own life.I can't wait to watch it again..
"Bent" is an interesting little Holocaust-film curio (based on a stage production) that looks at the death camps from a homosexual perspective.
It is intermittently affecting overall, but has its moments of pretension and self-indulgence (the baroque, decadent opening in Berlin comes to mind); the film can't really shake its stage roots, either, as reflected in certain scene setups (Ian McKellen's cameo in the park feels especially artificial).
Max (Clive Owen) is a member of Berlin's decadent gay underworld before World War II; when the Germans invade, he is promptly shipped off to a labor camp.
Along the way, he meets Horst (Lothaire Bluteau), a fellow prisoner who's homosexual; as the duo stacks rocks in blazing summer and freezing winter, they strike up an unconventional love affair (standing still during a 3-minute break every 2 hours, they make love verbally (and literally); these scenes are greatly affecting, with Owen and Bluteau fully convincing us of their passion.
This is set in Germany right around the time the Nazis started herding Jews and gays into concentration camps.
By coincidence, I was reading "Double Life: A Love Story from Broadway to Hollywood" at the same time that I saw this movie.It will undoubtedly seem a stretch to compare the lives of a well-off creative gay couple in America to a pair of homosexual inmates in the extraordinarily brutal circumstances of a Nazi concentration camp, but during the very well acted parts of the film where Clive Owen stood next to Lothaire Bluteau and they were able to "make love" without touching or doing anything obvious to anyone watching, it did seem remarkably similar to the life the American couple led for so many years.They too could never touch or show affection in public.
Even after they eventually lived together and despite the fact that most people knew they were living together, for many social and business events they would never attend together and usually appeared with a woman "date."Even in Hollywood, of all places, for one of the men to get anywhere as a movie studio executive, any public evidence of their gay relationship had to be kept hidden away and for that matter, most of the Jews in Hollywood during that time kept their Jewish identity hidden as well.What I saw in this movie was less to do with the Nazis specifically and more to do with the survival of emotional stability and of love in a hostile environment that refuses to accept that love can even exist.Even for the American couple, life was only tolerable when they did everything they could to conceal their love and their relationship for much of their 50 years together.
The other was robbed and threatened with death by a pair of men whose main motivation was their loathing for "faggots." Blackmail overt and subtle existed throughout their lives.Yes, the movie was set in Nazi Germany, the epitome of all that's evil, but the message isn't meant simply as a historical reference.
I encourage any and all to find this movie and watch it, then watch it again with all of your friends.The actors (especially Clive Owen, Lothaire Bluteau, and the GREAT Sir Ian McKellen)pulled you in to their world and lives, in a way that many mainstream A listers would give their front teeth to be able to do.
Drama is one thing, but films dealing with such subject matter as concentration camps is certainly not something I'm going to want to watch.
But as a film, it was moving and had a singular story to tell that is not usually presented, that being the persecution of homosexuals under the Nazi regime during WWII.
It makes me laugh now at how blaze I was that this film starred the talents of Sir Ian McKellen and Clive Owen amongst others, but as an 11 year old I didn't know who they were!
But when done badly, you ask yourself, "When are they going to make a movie about the Holocaust from Hitler's dog's point of view?"  The opening scene was all too reminiscent of Cabaret, which this film quite obviously draws major inspiration.
But when we have exhausted all the possible depth, significance and meaning of the movie, it is, in the end, just a poignant, powerful story about a guy who decided that "life, without love, is not worth living after all."In the end, too, I think Max was redeemed, and the movie kept triteness at bay by NOT patronizing him.It's worthy of my praise and, I think, your time also..
Also, this movie was made 20 years ago when showing two leading, masculine men in a gay LTR, living a "normal" life with a happy ending was not yet accepted.
Gay lust/love and decadence in Berlin, Jews-Nazis-concentration camps - all intriguing elements, a good basis for developing a tense narration where different aspects of human nature move to the surface.
The 2nd part includes the strongest scenes of the film where the 2 protagonists (splendidly performed by Clive Owen and Lothaire Bluteau) have to stand attention...
Nevertheless, unless you are uncomfortable with "different" approaches on "known" events, then Bent is definitely for you; plus I think that Clive Owen should be used more in profound drama films - he did a great job here..
It is not a film about the gay life in Nazi period.
This film is about the experience of two gay men who got imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.The film is minimalistic, but it is very touching.
Its always the Jew's travail I  hear about concerning the Nazi Germany Period, but other GROUPS apparently got treated miserably as well, and this movie deals with one of them.Pathos, tremendous camera action (black/white & technicolor), superb character acting, excellent thematic development and flow, and perfect music accompaniment.I will see it again..
Every scene seems to have a point even despite the pointlessness of the violence and the killing.As i watched it, and time progressed I figured that the time Horst and Max spent in Dachau was supposed to be a catharsis for Max, teaching him not only that love is the only real reason to live, but also teaching him how to love!
They loved each other and died for each other.The film was just positively full of beautiful and captivating moments set in the stark contrast of the concentration camp.
The scene where Horst knows that he is going to die, and gives Max the secret signal that says he loves him.
And the very powerful scene where Max put's on Horsts shirt and kills himself.This is a hard movie to watch.
The movie's main protagonist Max lived the good life in Berlin (i.e. having as much sex and cocaine with as many sexy men as he could find despite being in a relationship with another man, much to his boyfriend's heartbreak) before the 'Night of the Long Knives' in which the Nazis rounded up as many of the openly gay men as possible.
The movie ends in tragedy but before that Horst has made Max proud of what and who he is and he starts to wear his pink triangle with pride.
I saw the movie as an unconventional love story, set in Germany during the Holocaust era.Max (Owen Wilson) is a homosexual man living in Berlin with his dancer lover Rudy (Brian Webber), and indulging himself into an affair with a Nazi officer.
They brought out the fact that there were homosexuals also among the Nazis, and it also served as a great contrast to the Dachau environment, but I would have loved it if the story would have allowed a glimpse into another aspect of Max's life aside from sex and parties.
I simply was looking for something more to Max in the first third of the movie.However, Clive Owen was so amazing that even this is forgivable.
On the way to Dachau Max is forced to beat Rudy to death by the brutal SS guards to prove his claim that he is not homosexual; Max has decided that a yellow star (Jewish) would be less dangerous a marker than a pink triangle.In the early scenes of the film we are given a look at the Berlin club scene; Mick Jagger has a stunning cameo as Greta, a performer at the club who knows what's coming and makes an abortive attempt to warn Max, but Max won't listen; neither will he listen to his uncle Freddie (Ian McKellen), an older and more discreet man who satisfies his desires in secret with rent boys.
Clive Owen, brought in to fill Richard Gere's shoes (Gere had played the role on Broadway but was doing another film at the time), displays a haunting vulnerability as the terrified Max, and Lothaire Bluteau's Horst is in many ways the central figure of the piece, as he stands for what happens when love and hate collide.
It didn't concentrate much on the characters as it should've done and the movie really dragged on so I decided to just not watch it anymore.Mick Jagger was excellent at his role and of course, singing streets of Berlin in drag!I just wish he really made more appearances in this film, it didn't work much without him :/.