Rating: 
Summary: The most impacting GLBT film I have ever seen...
Review: I have seldom seen a film which stuck me on such an emotional level. It is rare for a film to have a lasting impact on me, but I left the theatre changed after watching "Bent". It is right up there with "Requiem for a Dream" as movies that can be labled psychological brutality, albiet very worthwhile psychological brutality. A truely superb film.
Rating:
Summary: Bent - A MUST SEE
Review: I read the play about 10 years ago and have never forgotten it. I was surprised to see the movie at my local Blockbusters. I rented it and viewed it three times before the due date. This film is a MUST SEE. It is as effective as the play. The acting and cinematography are beyond compare! Only the British could produce such a work of art, disturbing asw it may be.
Rating: 
Summary: A WASTE OF TIME
Review: I realize that the topic of gays in a concentration camp could be difficult to portray without being depressing, but this film was downright DULL. First of all, it implies gays have nothing more in their souls than sex. It shows them as shallow and uncaring less than human robots, and I resented it... I think they should try this again...
Rating: 
Summary: More leaning than bent
Review: I remember reading a book on the little-known fate of the European gypsies in the Holocaust and having the same reaction as I did on discovering the play of Bent. Since the largest number of victims of Hitler's extermination of non-Aryans were Jews, any minority persecution is doomed to be an historical footnote. Hitler is probably still chuckling over this, being one of the many ironies of his legacy. He would be rolling on the floor about how, the destruction of the gas chambers before the camps were liberated, feeds the denial of the historical revisionists. (The reconstructions in Shoah, and TV's War and Rememberance are chilling). Of course it is foolish to compare the suffering of one abstractive group to another (you say anti-semitism/I say homophobia/let's call the whole thing off), but the tragedy of the Jews is so overwhelming that a divisiveness of thinking is impossible to avoid for any of the other undesirables in the Third Reich - be they political dissidents, Catholics, the mentally ill, the chronically unemployed, criminals, artists, intellectuals, Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses, clergymen, Gypsies, or homosexuals. (My apologies for anyone overlooked). This point is subtlely made in the film of Bent, along with details that redeem what is otherwise a disappointing experience. We see how the German children played and the adults picnicked at the site of Dachau. Just imagine the circus around Auschwitz, where the smell of burning flesh hung in the air and the flames of the ovens rose high into the sky. These observations make a mockery of the claims that the protected knew nothing of the camps. We also get a tantalising glimpse of Ernst Roehm, the gay leader of the SA, whose murder on the Night of the Long Knives, begins the film. The stylised direction by Sean Mathias is misguided because it works against the material, robbing it of any truth, though I can't deny the eroticism of the opening decadence. I never believed that these actors or the locations were German since Berlin and Dachau are specified in the dialogue. (In fact, Roehm and his soldiers were stationed in Lake Wiessee, near Munich, on the night). Considering that Martin Sherman wrote the play for Ian McKellen and that he played the lead in it's debut staging, his negligible appearance here is practically an insult. The set for Dachau, while an interesting choice to suggest an industrial work-camp, is so large that there is never any apparent threat to the prisoners, which makes the final scene almost laughable in it's logic. And the performances are competent but uninspired. One can only salivate now over the idea of Richard Gere, who played the lead on Broadway, circa American Gigolo, being directed in the film version by Fassbinder. On the plus side is Philip Glass' score, the designer pyjamas, and the strength of the narrative of the play - the randomness of fate, the nature of friendship, the cost of survival, and the need for love in a world of cruelty. It is said that if the Nazis had won the war, sooner or later everyone would have ended up in the gas chambers- the realisation of the ultimate expression of inhumanity. The bleakness of this thought is echoed in Sherman's text.
Rating:
Summary: no
Review: I saw this for Mick Jagger. And his small part is filmed awkwardly. And then the movie after is slow. If you're gay this will surely resonate more than it will for straights like me. I just wanted a good movie, not an "important" film. So I lost interest in it's leaden pace. Often plays translated to film fail, as this one did. Although Mick looks FABULOUS in a sequined dress.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore Bigot Above
Review: I thoght this was a movie review spot not a chance for anti-gay reviewers to post. Why would Amazon allow it?
Rating: 
Summary: True for even today...
Review: I thought this was a great film. It shows what people do even today to keep others from being against who they are. What's really good is when the truth comes out as it always does. Eventually we find the love and pride to be who we are and I think this film was a great way of showing just that. And yes, it will make you cry, smile, and cry again.
Rating:
Summary: I love this movie
Review: I was really happy with the positive reviews that Bent has been getting here, I love the film and am always disapointed when a reviewer blows it off. This movie literally made me sob (my emotions are easily manipulated)both times I watched it. I've heard a lot of pissing and moaning about the "sex" scene but I thought it was really beautiful, wonderfully acted and very moving. I completely love this movie and can honestly say I wouldn't change one thing about it. Oh, and the reviewer who reviewed right before me is a very scary neo nazi. Someone should let him know that homophobia is never attractive and I would not be shocked to learn that he was a slightly impared and amply pimpled teenager. With no friends.
Rating:
Summary: I love this movie
Review: I was really happy with the positive reviews that Bent has been getting here, I love the film and am always disapointed when a reviewer blows it off. This movie literally made me sob (my emotions are easily manipulated)both times I watched it. I've heard a lot of pissing and moaning about the "sex" scene but I thought it was really beautiful, wonderfully acted and very moving. I completely love this movie and can honestly say I wouldn't change one thing about it. Oh, and the reviewer who reviewed right before me is a very scary neo nazi. Someone should let him know that homophobia is never attractive and I would not be shocked to learn that he was a slightly impared and amply pimpled teenager. With no friends.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Slow But Still Has Meaning....
Review: I'm glad I added this video to my gay film collection, and I would love to see the onstage version. The acting is brilliant and the story line has a strong foundation of truth and meaning. It definitely made me cry, however, the length of time spent "moving rocks" in this movie is way too long. I think the director got his point across after the first 10 minutes of it. The ending will hit you hard for sure, and the "love scenes" leave you with something to think about. If gay cinema is an interest of yours, don't miss out on this one.
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