Bent

Ratnesh

Directed by Sean Mathias and adopted from a play by Martin Sherman, Bent features the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany. Bent is a harrowing portray of the inhumane treatment of homosexuals by the Nazis, a subject overlooked by many writers. Though the brutalities of the Nazis have been kept off-screen, the movie is dark and unsettling.

Bent

As Bent opens, Max (Clive Owen) attends an orgy played by the drag queen Greta (Mick Jagger) when the club is raided by the police. Max and his lover Rudy (Brian Webber) manage to escape, but they are later arrested and are forced into a train to the Dachau concentration camp. Max betrays Rudy and makes a ‘deal’ with the Nazi officers, to get a yellow star (the one for the Jews) instead of the pink triangle (the one for gays). He had greater chances of survival as a disdained Jew rather than a disdained homosexual.

In the concentration camp Max falls in love with his fellow prisoner Horst (Lothaire Bluteau) who proudly wears a pink triangle. Horst shows him how to love and live freely even under the constant psychological tortures they face in the camp. Bare chest, exposed to the hot summer, not looking at or touching each other, they engage in imaginary sex. This is the tenderest and the most painful love scene ever one can see in any movie or TV show.

Bent is not just a ‘gay holocaust’ or a ‘love tragedy’. It is for the people who are willing to see a powerful movie about love and salvation. It is intense, moving, and completely unforgettable. So see it and be moved.