Bent

Based on Martin Sherman’s award winning stage play, ‘Bent’ focuses on the persecution of homosexual men in Nazi Germany. The story begins in the decadent gay clubs of Berlin at the close of the Weimar era, a period when homosexual expression was openly tolerated, and follows the fate of gay playboy Max (Clive Owen) and his dancer boyfriend Rudy. After Hitler increases the powers of the little-used German law, Paragraph 175, which makes homosexuality illegal, the couple are forced to spend two years on the run from the Gestapo. Finally they are caught and sent to a detention camp where Max meets and falls in love with Horst. Though the two men are subject to intense scrutiny and cannot touch, they find a way to make love. Despite his suffering, Max learns through his powerful bond with Horst that survival, like intimacy, has less to do with the flesh than with personal truth and fundamental human dignity. Cast includes Mick Jagger, Lothaire Bluteau, Brian Webber and Ian McKellen. With music by Philip Glass.