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        Bent was a great movie created in 1997 inspired by the play Bent. It follows Max’s journey through the Nazi regime. It shows his ability to cope with being a homosexual. The movie starts off in Germany showing all the clubs, hookers, cross-dressers, dancers, drug dealers, and anything else you can think of. It shows where people go to get away from the real world and engage in their pleasures and desires. This part of the movie reminded me of the movie Cabaret the most. Cabaret is about a club in Germany called the Kit Kat Club. It is a place to escape the world around you. Through the movie you see how the Nazi’s are changing Germany and the people who live in it. By the end, the Nazi’s take over it all. It is like Bent is the continuation of Cabaret, giving us a deeper look at what it became and the truth of it all. Cabaret used the Kit Kat Club's shows as the defense mechanism to protect them from actually talking about anything bad that was happening. Everything reflects the real world, but only hints at it. It is a brilliantly made movie/show. Like the beginning of Bent, we see how the excesses in life can hide you from what it really going on. Rudy, a nightclub dancer, is more concerned about his dancing lessons than his life. He does not see the severity of it all. One night at the club Max, although already with Rudy, brings another man home and sleeps with him. He happens to be enrolled in the army. The army, upon finding out he is gay, hunts him down and finds him in Max’s house the morning after. Max and Rudy, upon seeing his throat being slit, flee. This begins their journey, they finally realize they are unsafe being who they really are and need to leave the country.

They camp out in a forest, which Rudy claims is a jungle, and sleep in a trashcan. This is the first time we see Max’s transformation into a repressed state. Even if nobody can see them, he does not want to take part in homosexual activity, fearing it could get him killed. But, Rudy does not care and tells him how much he loves him. They hear dogs and start to run, but quickly get caught by the Nazis.

Max and Rudy are caught and are onboard the train to a concentration camp. All the other captives have uniforms, which means the Rudy and Max are the only new members. A Nazi enters and picks Rudy to torture because he is wearing glasses. This shows the random acts of fate that could get you killed or keep you living. There is no reason for his death. The Nazi orders him to step on his glasses and then takes him into another room and begins beating him. This is when Max meets Horst, who holds Max back from trying to save Rudy. Horst tells him that surviving the train is the hardest part and that if they find out that he knew Rudy they would kill him too. He claims that Rudy is a lost cause because he wore glasses and there is nothing either of them could do to save him. Rudy is brought back bloody and beaten, and they interrogate Max asking if he knows him. Max denies ever knowing him, but it is obviously excoriating because they both love each other very much. He then is required to beat Rudy to prove he does not know him. Rudy dies and is thrown off the train. First love down.

Max is now by himself determined to survive. Once arriving to the concentration camp Max gets a yellow star, which is the Jewish symbol, instead of a pink triangle, which is the gay symbol, because Horst told him that the lowest rank was the triangle. Horst confronts Max about it and tells him he is a coward for not wearing his triangle with pride. Max denies everything about himself to save his life, no matter what the cost. He tries to deny and convince himself he is not gay. He tells Horst that he WILL make it out alive.

The prisoners of the Nazi’s are a horrifying sight to see. Everyone with the same sign on their shirts bunk together in tight corridors sleeping on wood. Their heads are shaved, they have one outfit and eat sardines almost everyday. Most of them are incredibly thin and they are not allowed to touch. Every right is taken away from them and they are required to work all day, everyday, doing pointless tasks. Max’s task is to carry rocks from one side of the room to the other and then carry them back. It is supposed to drive him mad. They have a 3-minute break every two hours, in which they must stand at attention.

Horst, because he wears a pink triangle, never saw Max because of the different jobs they have. Max bribed a guard with money to move Horst to Max's job, so they could work together. This is when their relationship really took off. Max did it for the best intentions, claiming it is the best job you could have, but Horst thought it was just plain stupid. But, soon they became close friends and fell in love. They were the only ones each other had. They got each other through each day and made them want to keep living. When Horst got sick and did not care to get better, Max made him care. It is amazing how two people can fall in love without ever touching. They even had sex without touching. It was truly amazing to see how well this relationship worked.

In the end, Max bribed a guard to get medicine for Horst to cure him. The guard found out Max got it for someone else and killed Horst. Max was required to dispose of the body. Before Horst died, he rubbed his left eyebrow, which was the sign to Max saying, “I love you.” Disposing of his body is the first time he ever got to touch Horst. It is a beautiful moment. Soon after Max took Horst’s shirt, put it on and committed suicide on the electric fence. He died a homosexual with his pink triangle. Max had lost two loved ones. He changed from only caring about his survival to caring about Horst too. There was no point in going on without him. He knew that everyone who loved him always was taken away from him. It was a tragic ending. 

It was interesting to see the repression of homosexuals. When one says Nazi Germany, the first thing I think of is Jewish people, not homosexuals. This shed light on what really happened and was heartbreaking. The difference between the two is you could prove you were straight; you could not prove you were not Jewish. They made Max rape a 10-year-old girl to prove he was straight, but he was still put in the camp because he looked Jewish. The ones who were in the camp who wore a pink triangle were the ones who refused to be repressed and stood up for what they were. Horst was standing up for homosexuals everywhere and looked down upon Max for denying what he really was.