Bent (1997)

High impact sex scenes and holocaust themes

Max (a very spunky Clive Owen) is a young Jewish gay man in 1930s Berlin who, after a fateful tryst with a German soldier, is forced to run for his life. Pursued and captured, Max is placed in a concentration camp where he prefers to be identified by the yellow star (for Jews), because in the eyes of the Nazis, gays (who wear the pink triangle) are the lowest form of human being. But it takes a forbidden relationship with openly gay and proud prisoner, Horst (Lothair Bluteau, from Jesus of Montreal) to enable Max to accept himself and also stand up for his innate dignity and freedom, even in the most seemingly hopeless of circumstances. The scene where the two prisoners make love right under the watchful eyes of their guards, without ever touching, is a spine-tingling tour de force. The original stageplay from the 1970s has been faithfully adapted by its playwright, Martin Sherman, and has cameos from Ian McKellan (who originated the role of Max on the stage in 1979) and Mick Jagger as a Berlin Cabaret era drag queen! While the play made people aware about the hitherto overlooked Nazi internment of homosexuals, the ultimate message of this devastatingly powerful play is that intolerance cannot destroy self-respect and love. You can also read the original play, and also watch the Robert Epstein documentary about homosexuality in Nazi Germany, Paragraph 175.