Word: maxed
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...with that caveat in mind that a viewer will have to approach Bent, a reworking of the 1979 Martin Sherman play which treats the persecution and internment of gay men in Nazi Germany. Handsome and likable but startlingly self-centered, playboy Max (Clive Owen) regularly hurts the feelings of his young lover Rudy (Brian Webber) by sleeping around with other men. But one night Max picks up the wrong soldier at a club, and the next morning the Gestapo appears at their door. On the run from the S.S. for two years, Max and Rudy are finally captured...
Despite their violent and dehumanizing environment, Max and Horst's relationship deepens into love, and finally--in a tragic conclusion which recapitulates the movie's insistence on displaying powerful images of the horrors of the Holocaust--Max is forced to examine his convictions and his own identity. The film's evident main theme: the ability of the human spirit to escape even the most hopeless of prisons, so long as the individual understands and takes pride in itself...
...problem is that it's difficult to maintain emotional identification with the main characters while we're having our minds and emotions numbed. For instance, the scenes of Max and Horst at work in the concentration camp--endless vistas of two ragged, small figures stumbling across the whiteness of stone or snow in their meaningless work--evoke echoes of the theatre of the absurd, of postmodern anguish a la Waiting for Godot. But it seems unclear why this effect is courted in the first place. The movie's ultimate aim appears to be a statement about the sublime aptitudes...
...film's acting is generally above average; unfortunately, that's not quite enough to make things work in a film so character-oriented as Bent. Owen's Max is conventionally handsome and is good at looking worried, but he doesn't quite succeed in letting us see into his inner world. It doesn't help that the chemistry between him and his first lover, Rudy, is almost nonexistent. Webber as Rudy exaggerates the younger man's submissiveness to the point that the character becomes almost infantile--while we sympathize with his helplessness, he's petulant enough to alienate the audience...
...McKellan, who originated the role of Max 20 years ago in the stage premier of Bent that won him an Olivier, is luminous in a later cameo as Max's Uncle Freddie. Freddie is a "fluff" like Max, but he's one who has chosen to play it safe by repressing his desires. And, fortunately, several of the play's most powerfully written moments have translated well to film. Especially remarkable is a pivotal scene in Dachau in which Max and Horst, forbidden to touch and kept under the ever-vigilant eye of their guard, make love to each other...