Bent
As flawed as its characters, Bent conveys a complexity of humanity played out against crumbling, harsh tapestries reaching the depths of brutality to the soaring heights of love. What I hate about a movie like Philadelphia, I love about Bent. These are not perfect people who happen to have bad things happen to them. These are regular people who suffer at the hands of other regular people.
Bent made me feel sick, empathethic, hopeless, melancholy, but I also laughed and was excited by a love scene in which there is no touching. Like a '60s avant garde gay film, scenes are often set in devastated tableaus, highlighting a unique beauty in what might otherwise be dirty, ugly.
The subtle commentary on the non-targeted Germans of the time was unexpected and poignant. A fat German couple watches as prisoners board the train where they might make it alive to work themselves to death at Dachau. Children squeal and play by the river and prisoners march into camp beside them. The contrast between the characters in hiding or on the run and the people who act as if everything is amusing and wonderful lifts the film above murky melodrama by providing a context for the horrors.
Bent also features surprise turns from Ian McKellan, Paul Bettany, and one of my favorite unknown actors, Rupert Graves, as a chillingly prissy SS officer. I recommend this film to everyone.
Bent made me feel sick, empathethic, hopeless, melancholy, but I also laughed and was excited by a love scene in which there is no touching. Like a '60s avant garde gay film, scenes are often set in devastated tableaus, highlighting a unique beauty in what might otherwise be dirty, ugly.
The subtle commentary on the non-targeted Germans of the time was unexpected and poignant. A fat German couple watches as prisoners board the train where they might make it alive to work themselves to death at Dachau. Children squeal and play by the river and prisoners march into camp beside them. The contrast between the characters in hiding or on the run and the people who act as if everything is amusing and wonderful lifts the film above murky melodrama by providing a context for the horrors.
Bent also features surprise turns from Ian McKellan, Paul Bettany, and one of my favorite unknown actors, Rupert Graves, as a chillingly prissy SS officer. I recommend this film to everyone.