 | |
| table width=100% cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3 border=0
tr
td bgcolor=#FFFFFFdiv class=titlefont color=#333333More Info /font/div/td
/tr
tr
td bgcolor=#FFFFFFtable cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2 border=0
tr valign=top
td style=font-size: smaller; class=title#149;/td
td style=font-size: smaller; class=titlea href=/uk/news.phpNews/a/td
/tr
tr valign=top
td style=font-size: smaller; class=title#149;/td
td style=font-size: smaller; class=titlea href=/uk/biography.phpBiography/a/td
/tr
tr valign=top
td style=font-size: smaller; class=title#149;/td
td style=font-size: smaller; class=titlea href=/uk/roles.phpRoles/a/td
/tr
tr valign=top
td style=font-size: smaller; class=title#149;/td
td style=font-size: smaller; class=titlea href=/uk/interviews.phpInterviews/a/td
/tr
tr valign=top
td style=font-size: smaller; class=title#149;/td
td style=font-size: smaller; class=titlea href=/uk/photogallery.phpPhotos/a/td
/tr
tr valign=top
td style=font-size: smaller; class=title#149;/td
td style=font-size: smaller; class=titlea href=http://rowanatkinson.org/videos/index.php?option=com_frontpageItemid=1Videos/a/td
/tr
tr valign=top
td style=font-size: smaller; class=title#149;/td
td style=font-size: smaller; class=titlea href=/uk/links.phpLinks/a/td
/tr
tr valign=top
td style=font-size: smaller; class=title#149;/td
td style=font-size: smaller; class=titlea href=/uk/contactus.phpContact Us /a/td
/tr
/table/td
/tr
/table |
|
|
| | | script type=text/javascript!--
google_ad_client = pub-7120633133907657;
google_ad_width = 728;
google_ad_height = 90;
google_ad_format = 728x90_as;
google_ad_type = text;
google_ad_channel =5636112618;
google_color_border = FFFFFF;
google_color_bg = FFFFFF;
google_color_link = 6A8BCC;
google_color_text = 000000;
google_color_url = 626262;
//--/script
script type=text/javascript
src=http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js
/scriptbrbr |
|
|
| Bent [1998] | ![Bent [1998]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51SRR3HGMWL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Sean Mathias
Actors: Lothaire Bluteau, Clive Owen, Ian Mckellen, Nikolaj Coster-waldau, Mick Jagger
Studio: Cinema Club
Category: DVD
Buy New: £28.00
Buy New/Used from £19.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  (11 reviews)
Sales Rank: 30127
Format: Pal, Widescreen
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Media: DVD
Running Time: 100 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5014138297770
ASIN: B00009P9PA
Release Date: July 14, 2003
Theatrical Release Date: November 26, 1997
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 I tried to like it November 16, 2007
This was obviously a play-to-film translation that underwent no adaptation whatsoever. The dialogue was hammy and forced, and the acting either overblown to the point of disbelief and disconnection. Frankly, thought Owen was terrible in this. And Jagger....ach, don't ask. I appreciate the theme of the film, and there were moments where it almost achieved something close to harrowing. I am sure it works well on stage, but this was slightly embarrassing.
 Added to the 'yeah i've seen that' list only September 17, 2007
Unless easily mesmorised by endless slow, stilted and over-worded scenes Bent will be a severe test of patience. Portraying the subtle and potentially interesting relationship between him and Bluteau seems a little beyond Owen's talent at times, and is not helped by the total lack of chemistry between them both, on any level. As the pace of the film diminishes to explore their relationship in the camp the direction and dialogue becomes at best tiresome to endure, and the verbal exchanges more superficial than sensual. Starting the film in the camp and then using flashbacks to gradually reveal how they got there would have been much more effective. I'm glad I saw it, but won't be going near it again.
Truly Dreadful May 26, 2006
3 out of 11 found this review helpful
This film is truly dreadful. It soon becomes apparent that the film is an adaptatiion of a stage play, as the style of dialogue and visual metaphore are clearly meant to lend meaning to scenes set on stage, however in the medium of a film they appear tediously pretentious. The actors themselves make the best of it though the script lends more than a whiff of ham to the result.
 A compelling recounting of the Holocaust from another angle April 5, 2006
28 out of 30 found this review helpful
This film is definitely not for the faint-hearted, nor those who choose to see human beings as "good or bad" and situations as "black or white." The main character, Max, is a bit of a rotter at the start of the piece, played with an unapologetic grin by Clive Owen (the grin gradually fades and fractures). The film opens by cross-cutting between the morning after one hell of a night before, during which Max hung out with his wild friends in an orgiastic melee that included dancers of both (and some questionable) sexes, Mick Jagger as Greta, a singer who hangs over the group in a circular sit-down trapeze as she sings, cocaine-snorting storm troopers (costumed and genuine), and Max now waking to find a strange, lovely boy in his bed (the excellent Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of "Black Hawk Down" and "Wimbledon"), and his enraged live-in lover screaming at him. In the confusion of "what the hell happened last night--I don't remember", they are interrupted by Storm Troopers who slit the throat of this lovely one-night stand while Max and his lover run for their lives to Greta, who dresses them as respectable men, burns her wardrobes, and sends them on to get to safety as best they can. As this night obviously represents Max's usual M.O., his shallow self-interest is believable enough that much later, in Dachau, we watch him gentled by the first love of his life, Horst (played with quiet self-confidence by Lothaire Bluteau) with as much surprise and joy as Max himself seems to experience. pAfter Max's headlong flight to his gay but closeted Uncle, played by Ian McKellen in a small but pivotal role, ends in failure to get papers for his lover as well as himself, the two hide out in the Black Forest of Germany, then end up captured on a train ride to hell, during which the boy is beaten to death and thrown off the train, and Max's psyche disintegrates into chaos as he tries to deny the reality of his new life and its morally repugnant choices--when it comes down to his life or his lover's, he chooses his own, following the Nazi guard's unspeakable order (the guard is played with cool, scary detachment by the impeccable Rupert Graves), and then follows this by another act (that must be left to the viewer to hear about to believe). By this time, his self-loathing has reached a level that is so unbearable, he makes yet another choice to try to survive that will somehow, in his own mind, make acceptable what he's just done. pHe chooses to debark the train in disguise as a Jew, rather than as the doubly ostracized, pink triangle-d homosexual. Max's deceit is quickly understood to be desperate but bone-deep, not merely a ploy. Max cannot be honest with himself about any aspect of his own character--despite the fact that he's constantly calling himself "a terrible person," his arrogant narcissism is obvious, as is his constant belief in his ability to "make deals" which will guarantee his survival. Only as his relationship with Horst develops does he begin to show signs of character. Earlier in the film, he has taken his young dancer partner under his wing and though resentful, has not abandoned him, a glimpse of what Max can become, but he hasn't behaved with much honor so far. This renouncement of his identity as a "fluffer" (his uncle's word) is his final selfish act. After this, Horst's influence begins to take hold and love enters his life, probably for the first time. As the two of them move rocks from one pile to another, only to move the same pile back to its original spot over and over again, their separation from the rest of the inmates of Dachau allows them to develop the sort of intimacy that Max has never even tried to seek in the midst of his previously hedonistic Berlin life. (I like, too, that their story stays isolated and doesn't get lost in expensive set-dressing that tries to re-create all of Dachau. The location appears to be an industrial site, and this separation keeps the focus appropriately narrow.) pI like Mick Jagger as the cross-dressing chanteuse of the group's nighttime rubble "Nightclub" and love that serious actors like Jude Law and Rachel Weisz show up for momentary bits that you'll miss if you blink, and that Ian McKellen took this small role as Max's uncle. Later, the always-great Paul Bettany shows up as another casually sadistic Nazi guard and brings about the film's denoument. This comradarie reminded me of "And the Band Played On..." where everyone pitched in to get the project made and to give it weight through their presence. It's an important story, and one which reminds us that the chant really shouldn't be "6 million dead," but rather and with all respect, "10 million dead," which is the estimated count when one adds the additional 4 million gay men and women, Catholics, political dissidents, Poles, Germans who wouldn't go along with the Reich or who were merely "intellectuals", French Resistance fighters (those who weren't shot), actual criminals (though who knows what that word meant during the Reich?) and miscellaneous "undesirables" who were not Jewish, but who suffered and died, too. And it's a good history lesson to see how homosexuals claimed the infamous upside-down pink triangle, turned it point up, and began to wear it with pride rather than shame--a wonderful example of the reclamation of self. In point of fact, Hitler's swastika was an ancient, universal "walking star" or "walking circle", a symbol that existed in Neolithic Europe as well as amongst Native Americans, as a symbol of transformation and growth. We Indians here have tried to reclaim it, as it was a powerful healing symbol, but it's hard to wear a bracelet with that sign on it, no matter what its history. But this is the reason Hitler chose it--it had a legacy of powerful change, and he stole it, as he stole other symbols of mystical power. pThe love-making scene between Max and Horst is beautifully acted, especially by Bluteau, and its subtlety was a masterstroke of writing--it is more emotionally deep than any "sex" scene could have been. It is a profound statement of the power of love and the assertion that love-making occurs in the mind as much as in the body. It feels, too, that this may have been the first time Max actually made love, rather than had sex, and it is moving and beautiful. By now Max has begun to change, and his capacity for unselfish love blossoms, ironically in the worst place on Earth--quite a wonderful bit of writing. pThe one problem with the film is the score. Phillip Glass' shallow, repetitive, irritatingly New Age-y music is, if you can imagine, more annoying than the idea of moving rocks back and forth. Only the final solo is beautiful and up to the standard of the rest of the film. His music is like Michael Nyman's--it either works beautifully or is a disaster, and I found it disastrous in this case. The musical cues are also abrupt and distracting, and in such a moody film, the last thing one wants is to be jarred out of a reverie. pThe heart-breaking but defining, self-affirming ending is often called a "downer" but I found it to be the opposite. To finally take his identity and his destiny into his own hands was Max's only way to truly "survive" both his loss and the camp--as Horst says earlier, such an act drives the Nazis crazy because it is self-willed, and their deepest goal was to destroy the will, not merely the life, of each camp inmate. Max's act is an escape beyond capture, and ultimately, his truest human act.
 A soulful and deeply philosophical love story February 9, 2004
23 out of 28 found this review helpful
I only saw this at a friend's home recently - it is a real tearjerker, with the added bitterness of having so much truth in it - it shows how great and how low the human spirit can be - amazing film - not just for gays.
|
|
|
br| script type=text/javascript!--
google_ad_client = pub-7120633133907657;
google_ad_width = 728;
google_ad_height = 90;
google_ad_format = 728x90_as;
google_ad_type = text;
google_ad_channel =5636112618;
google_color_border = FFFFFF;
google_color_bg = FFFFFF;
google_color_link = 6A8BCC;
google_color_text = 000000;
google_color_url = 626262;
//--/script
script type=text/javascript
src=http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js
/scriptbrbr |
|
|
| | |
