When “Bent” opened on Broadway 17 years ago, its power rested on a taut, wrenching scene in which Max (played by a young Richard Gere) and Horst, two inmates in a Nazi concentration camp, made love to each other by talking, all the while standing perfectly still. The moment relied on the vulnerability of the actors, intimately describing the rawest, most delicate passions.
Martin Sherman’s theatrical version of “Bent” didn’t get universal praise, but it was widely admired for its authentic emotion and the history it taught: Here, for the first time, was a story about the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. Here, for the first time in mainstream culture, the pink triangle was unveiled. (Ironically, the pink triangle, inverted, later became a symbol for activism around AIDS, a disease in its viral infancy just as “Bent” made its stage debut.)
For the stage-bound “Bent,” claustrophobia was also a vital ingredient. The theatrical piece split the story in two: The first act followed Max around in his hedonistic Berlin life; the second focused on the budding intensity between him and Horst. If it was hard to breathe because there were too many bodies in the first act, it was equally hard because of the loneliness in the second.
How then to translate this drama to celluloid? Director Sean Mathias, making his film debut, was very familiar with Sherman’s story, having staged it several times. And what he has done on film is open the story up, creating a panorama of emptiness in the wasteland of the labor camp where Max, a Jew wearing a yellow star, and Horst, a homosexual with a pink triangle, are imprisoned. Here there is nothing but endless snow, endless heat, endless space. And that has its own hellish qualities.
Mathias’ “Bent” also enjoys the participation of two charismatic leads, neither of whom fits current stereotypes of the gay pretty boy. French Canadian actor Lothaire Bluteau, with his small features slightly askew, plays the sensible Horst, and handsome but skinny Clive Owen plays the confused Max. That they don’t physically fit together — Bluteau is considerably smaller; even his head seems dwarfed by the larger, edgier Owen — makes their relationship both more real and more poignant.
“Bent” opens with Max enjoying a bacchanal at a drag club where his live-in lover, Rudy (played by South African actor Brian Webber), is performing. The club is owned by a cynical, opportunistic drag queen named Greta, played deliciously by Mick Jagger. It’s the “Night of the Long Knives,” when Adolf Hitler’s Gestapo conducted a notorious series of raids, and the unwitting Max picks up an SS officer and takes him home for a tumble. In the process, however, he exposes himself, Rudy and even Greta to the Nazi authorities.
Greta is no fool, however, quickly collaborating to save his own skin and burning any and all evidence of his gay life. Because he refuses to help Max and Rudy, the two men are forced underground. Max later tracks down his effete Uncle Freddie (a jumpy Ian McKellen, for whom Sherman actually wrote “Bent,” and who starred in the script’s first production in London), who manages to get papers for Max. But Max feels an obligation to Rudy, and while waiting and trying to force Uncle Freddie to come up with another set, they get caught by the Gestapo and loaded onto a train to a concentration camp.
Up to this point, Mathias’ film is realistic and intense. But from here on, as Max is assigned to move rocks endlessly from one pile to another pile to another, the film takes on a hypnotic, more metaphorical tone. The sex and the torture are both symbolic and real. By the time the film comes to its conclusion, however predictable, it has built up enough power for a surprisingly charged finale.
”BENT”
(star) (star) (star) 1/2
Directed by Sean Mathias; adapted by Martin Sherman from his own play; production designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis; music by Philip Glass; produced by Michael Solinger and Dixie Linder; executive produced by Sarah Radclyffe and Hisami Kuroiwa. A Goldwyn Entertainment Co. release; opened Wednesday. Running time: 104 minutes. MPAA rating: NC-17.
THE CAST
Horst ……………… Lothaire Bluteau
Max ……………….. Clive Owen
Rudy ………………. Brian Webber
Uncle Freddie ………. Ian McKellen
Greta ……………… Mick Jagger
