Posted at http://rayrandomly.blogspot.com/
After Joy Behar's comments earlier this week, I thought I would feature the 1997 Sean Mathias film Bent this Sunday.
Based on the 1979 play by Martin Sherman (who also wrote the film's screenplay) it is the story of Max (played by Clive Owen) who flees with his boyfriend Rudy (played by Brian Weber) after a storm trooper Max has picked up one night is killed by an S.S. officer in their apartment. They flee Berlin and hide out in the woods waiting for Max's rich uncle Freddie (played by Ian McKellan) to arrange papers for their safe passage. The two are discovered by the Gestapo and put on a train for the concentration camp in Dachau. Rudy is killed on the train and Max is comforted and befriended by Horst (played by Lothaire Bluteau). The two form an intense bond which forces Max to face and accept who he is as a gay man. When Horst is killed by guards, Max puts on his jacket bearing the pink triangle that marked him as a gay man and commits suicide by throwing himself upon the electric fence.
Clive Owen has commented,
"I think I am more attracted to characters with a subtext, whatever that is and they don't necessarily have to be virtuous, but they have to at least be human."
The play is based on the testimony of Hans Heger in The Men with the Pink Triangle. When the play was first performed (Ian McKellen was an original castmember in London as was Richard Gere in L.A.-- maybe that's where all those gay rumors started.) little was known about the history of the persecution of gays by the Third Reich. The play is credited as helping to begin awareness and the historical revision that occured in the 80's and 90's. The film also contains a great performance by Mick Jagger as drag performer "Greta."
Here are a couple of clips: