Customer Reviews

Harry and Max

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A film about incestuous gay brothers doesn't immediately spring to mind as the sort of film that most viewers would probably want to watch. However, one should not be put off by the seemingly incendiary subject matter. Brotherly sexual love is probably a lot more frequent than most people think and kudos should certainly be given to maverick independent film director, Christopher Munch, for tackling something that is so obviously provocative in nature.

Harry and Max, however, isn't just about brotherly incest; it's a portrait of a relationship that is much more multifaceted and wide-ranging, symbolizing the complexities and contradictions that perhaps exist in most sibling relationships. There's an element of mystery to the boys' relationship, their friendship hard to pin down; it's as though Munch is teasing us, and letting us view, through the actions of Harry and Max, how frail and delicate human relationships actually are.

Much of the action plays out when Harry (Bryce Johnson) and takes Max (Cole Williams) on a long-deferred camping trip into the San Gabriel Mountains. Harry is based in New York but has stopped over in L.A. on his way to a concert tour in Japan. Harry is a twenty-three year old boy band idol, but lately his career in the United States has been waning. Max, however, has been going from strength to strength; he's just turned sixteen and has already begun to emulate the success of his older brother.

Max has become a sort of teen idol, and spurred on by his ambitious money hungry mother (Michelle Phillips), has had his picture plastered over the covers of the latest teen-magazines. Harry won't give their mother the time of day; he resents her favoritism of his younger brother, and wants to see him escape her clutches, while she doesn't want Harry's "reckless desire for self destruction" to rub off on Max.

The bond between the brothers has always been close, so close that on a Bermuda vacation they once briefly crossed the line into incest. Max would like to repeat that Bermuda interlude, on the camping trip but Harry gently refuses him. Whereas, Max readily accepts that he is gay, Harry is fraught with sexual confusion, lately drowning himself in drink. His bewilderment becomes so pronounced that we witness him virulently masturbating to images of Max, while secretly plotting to befriend Josiah (Tom Gilroy), a forty-year-old man whom Max has occasionally been seeing.

The irony of the relationship is that the younger Max is the more focused and responsible, while Harry, at once an alcoholic and workaholic, is reckless, deceitful, and teasing. Max also has a bisexual nature. He's attracted to Harry's ex-girlfriend Nikki (Rain Phoenix), and would like to see Harry reunite with her because Max believes she could be a stabilizing factor in his brother's wayward life. Nikki knows that the two brothers are close, but she just can't quite put her finger on what is wrong.

Harry and Max is obviously a low-budget film, but the script is clever and the dialogue is intelligent and snappy, especially the brotherly repartee that develops between the two boys. Munch has also managed to inspire some fine performances out of his two leads, with sexy Bryce Johnson certainly picking up the lion's share of the acting cachet. He convincingly gets across Harry's all encompassing physical need for Max, while at the same time showing us that as part of growing up he needs to establish and respect sexual boundaries.

The ending is abrupt and will probably take most viewers by surprise. As Harry and Max grow and change so does their love, and the final scenes reinforce the illusive and evolving nature of love, and the need to constantly define it. There are no easy answers to brotherly love of this nature and escaping the clutches of physical desire is always fraught with difficulty.

In Harry and Max, Munch has created a touching portrait of brotherly love between two lonely siblings who clearly, only had each other to depend upon for security and emotional nourishment at the most pivotal moments in their lives. Mike Leonard August 05.

Everyone seems to think this movie is about incest. Technically, there is some incest in the film, but isn't it really just about sexuality??

Two young guys who are in the music industry are not going to be normal people. Their lives are so different from everyone else. Their sexuality is different as well. Overall, both Harry and Max are lost souls looking to grab onto to something or someone good.

And when your life is as strange as theirs is, I guess you might consider grabbing onto the one person--the only person--you think you truly know and trust--your brother.

This is an interesting and thought-provoking look at love and affection in a form most people would be uncomfortable with. The subject of love and sex between two brothers is a compelling and convincingly-portrayed premise for this film which sounds and looks like every other gay film except for this detail.

In fact, the story plays out like many other gay love stories where the two lovers fight and bicker, fool around with other people (partly out of need and partly just to get even closer to the true object of affection.)

So, it seems there are a few too many unexplored and uninteresting characters in the way of the real story and it seems like everyone wants to have sex with everyone else...except the two brothers really just want each other, sexually and emotionally.

Why this occurs is not really well explored or supported, except that their parents are presumed to be unfeeling and cold and perhaps they were each other's only real comfort.

The leads' acting is generally good and the chemistry between them seems real. There are some problems with the continuity of the film and the extent to which it depends on narration to move the film along and explain the story. The fact that you need narration to know what is going on is symptomatic of the screenwriting and direction deficiencies. Also, the sequence at the end will satisfy few and the film ends with a quiet and somewhat humiliating thud.

So, while the story and the study in affection are compelling and relatively well-crafted, the sum of the parts is frustrating and as much an excercise in self-destruction as in love.

I recommend this film for it's unique story and the generally gentle handling of the subject-matter, but there are some big holes in this film that leave it only partly intact.

I give props to this movie for being something I've never seen before. There aren't too many sibling incest movies out there. So this movie was different. I felt the acting was pretty good. There are some very long dialog scenes that are very difficult to do. Most movies have a lot of cuts so the actors don't really have to learn their lines. But there are very few cuts in this movie and LOTS of talking so the actors had to do a lot of studying. The dialog is also the movie's down side. The two characters in this movie can get really annoying. You wanna yell at the screen for them to just SHUT UP and stop whining. That's all they ever do is complain. They fight like real brothers do so in that way it's realistic. But annoying. The other downside is the ending. It kinda just drops off. The older brother stops seeing his younger brother. That's kind of a bummer. I would have liked to see them on good terms in the end.

But anyway, it's not the best movie I've ever seen but I enjoyed it.

Harry and Max is an odd little film. It's a film that, quite frankly, I'm surprised any American director/producer/film company/actor would tackle. It's a film that has brotherly incest as an active thread running through it. The trouble is, the incest angle really isn't reason enough for the film - there needs to be another, stronger plot around which to build the film.

Bryce Johnson as Harry and Cole Williams (singer/songwriter/sometimes actor Paul Williams' son) as Max are not only engaging and believable as brothers, but downright talented actors. You can see the wheels turning in Max's head as he mulls things over and over. Harry, a burgeoning alcoholic, seems sufficiently numbed to reality.

There is no deficiency when it comes to the acting ability of this cast of quite surprisingly fine actors. Rain Phoenix (River and Joachin's little sister) is believable as the boys' friend/lover and Michelle Phillips does a believable job as the pushy/b*t*hy stage mom.

What is on the screen is thoughtful and thought provoking. My problem with the film stems from what ISN'T on the screen.

The film is about 23 year old Harry (a boy band pop idol with a waning popularity) and 16 year old Max (an up and coming boy band pop idol). Harry lives in New York and Max lives at home with their mother - a woman with whom Harry does not get along. Where Dad is, is anyone's guess.

Max freely acknowledges that he is gay. Further, to Harry, he freely acknowledges that he loves his brother Harry, but in a romantic sense as well as a brotherly sense. We can tell that Harry feels the same, but on some level knows that it is wrong. (He allows Max to have oral sex with him, but doesn't encourage it) Max is so young that he doesn't really care. Max wants Harry and he's fairly blatant about that. Harry wants Max (he masturbates looking at publicity pictures of Max in a teen magazine), but can't bring himself to commit - instead he seduces the 40 year old former yoga instructor who slept with Max several years earlier. It would seem Harry wants to learn how this older man managed to create a "connection" with Max that he, himself, seems unable to develop...or is it simply that he doesn't want to be one upped by his little brother and he wants to know just what it was that Max experienced with this man?

Max tries the straight side and sleeps with Nikki (Rain Phoenix), Harry's former girlfriend. After this happens, for some reason, Harry feels the need to divulge to Nikki that he and Max have previously been lovers.

Why? To what end? Max is able to move on with his life, but Harry seems destined to pine after his little brother and drift further and further into alcoholism.

What's the message of the movie? Is there supposed to be a message? Frankly, it doesn't need a message, but since the script is somewhat fragmented, it seems to be trying to provide us with a message.

Now, don't get me wrong, I liked the movie just fine. However, it irritated the devil out of me, because the very realistic conversations between Harry and Max never fully delivered the complete message to me, the viewer. While realistic, in that the two of them reference incidents in their past, we, the audience are never privy to those incidents. They are only vaguely referred to - as two people who share the same past would quite believably do. However, WE don't know what happened. There should have been a flashback sequence (however brief) of the often alluded to incident in Bermuda where the boys initially consumated their incestuous relationship.

What's the background situation with Harry and Roxanne, his New York girlfriend? A couple more lines of dialogue could have cleared this up.

Why did Harry dump Nikki? A couple more lines of dialogue could have cleared this up too. We just know it ended.

In the beginning, we have no reason or reference to understand that Harry and Max are in the music industry. They do not feel compelled to sing or play music. If Harry is as driven as Max says, and Harry is writing his own music, then wouldn't he have at least dragged along a guitar on their weekend camping trip?

In the last scene of the film, we are to believe that Max has not only moved on with his life in the music industry, but he has found a male lover with whom he is completely satisfied. From a psychological standpoint, this out of character. He initiated the relationship with his brother and pushed for it to go further, time and again. Harry also wanted the relationship, but just didn't know how to allow himself to "be there". Harry is now the one pining for Max and now Max is completely rebuffing him and confidently so. Moreso, Max seems somewhat disgusted by his older brother. I don't think this is fitting with the character.

This is a short film by feature length standards. I would love to have had about fifteen more minutes of expositional material that could have more fully developed the situations and characters. Learning about the character's background only via the DVD jewel box is not the best way to introduce the audience to them.

I read the reviews, I read the case, I thought I knew what I was getting in to. Wrong. This film is intense, and it is far more insightful then I expected. It examines the whole idea of love, fraternal, romantic, and the limits we meet. It also takes some of those erotic fantasies that get put in front of us on a regular basis and shows that they come with a very dark side and huge cost.

I have passed my copy among a number of friends. They have differing takes on the film, but none have regretted watching it.

(PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS REVIEW IS BASED ON MORE THAN ONE VIEWING OF THE FILM)

(1) While 'good attempt' is an acceptable way in which to describe this film, there are most definitely three words which better describe it: HONEST.........FOOLISH............BRAVE. All three adjectives apply to the producers/director, but most certainly they apply to the two male leads (their futures in film likely are not now as assured as they might otherwise have been prior to undertaking these particular roles.....despite relatively accomplished performances). Also, it's important to say of this work that, while instances of incest have occurred in earlier films of various genres, this reviewer is unaware of any mainline film script which has been as open or blatant in picturing such an ancient taboo (however, see paragraph 3, below).

(2) Much of the reaction to this film will, undoubtedly, be one of abhorrence. Yet can there be any question that the type of sibling love and sexual behavior exhibited here has occurred countless times throughout human history (whether there are those who like thinking so, or not). And whether that's been brother to brother, or sister to sister, it is behavior which has occurred, sometimes as a one-time or an infrequent event, other times most certainly for life. (At least it's not a behavior which can be claimed to "muddy the gene pool", such as a brother/sister relationship might). But (and here's a vital point) in incest, as in most homosexual events, at the end we are left with the question of who will admit to it. Surely we must all see that, throughout time, those who've railed the loudest, and behaved the most indignantly regarding homosexual behavior, very often were and are those who earlier on in their lives either took part in such behavior or possessed such feelings. Strong societal "norms", of course, force these individuals to, later on, express repellent feelings when confronted with such sexual behavior. Possibly, but perhaps in a much lesser number of instances, this might be just as true of incest behavior.

(3) To be completely objective about this film, there is, indeed, a fourth word which needs be applied to the work: FUDGED. Viewers will note that on several occasions the scriptwriters/director have "pulled back" from showing more complete scenes of the physical love that could have been expected to be taking place between these two brothers (how often did you, the viewer, see one or other pull back from physically responding when you knew that, in real life, there likely would have been no hesitation?). In other words, while it wouldn't have been necessary to go into porn mode, there were a number of instances of "talking the talk" but very little in the way of "walking the walk." In fact it might be said that there was more "directness" of physical behavior in the much more secondary relationship scene, involving Harry and a former Yoga instructor of Max's, than there was between the two leads. Too bad, for Harry and Max were really who this movie was supposed to be all about.

(NOTE that, in the Director/Leading Performers Commentary track for this film on DVD, the issue of there not being more sexual follow-through is 'spoken at' but never actually 'addressed' ---although actor, Cole Williams, does express his surprise that there had always seemed to be a "pulling back" from these activities, once they'd started)

(4) In the end and at the very least, however, this film has to be recognized as a "start" at being more open in showing and describing a behavior that is as old as man and woman.

This movie is kinda slow taking off and in my opnion was slow threw out if I had the choice I would have probely rented insted

I was really looking forward to seeing this movie but was, frankly, disappointed. I didn't object to the subject matter, and I didn't mind the way the producers shied away from a frank depiction of what the two brothers might get up to in bed. I enjoyed the performances, especially those of Cole Williams (as Amos Lassen mentioned--he is Paul Williams' son, and more or less a ringer for him) and Bryce Johnson (who is paired again with Tom Gilroy and director Munch, this time as editor, in "The Bluetooth Virgin"), and it was good to see Rain Phoenix in a rather substantive role, although she did seem a bit old for either brother. No, I was disappointed because the film is by Christopher Munch, the director of "Sleepy Time Gal" and, most importantly, "The Hours and Times," one of the best films ever to deal with the themes of sex ('60s style), celebrity, and the Beatles. That film also dealt with a road trip, as well as with two young men discovering new aspects of their sexuality, but in that case the characters were based on two real-life celebrities: John Lennon and Brian Epstein. I'm not sure why Munch chose to portray Harry and Max as teen idols; perhaps in a homage to his earlier film. But it's a buzzkill here. It's hard to care what happens to two characters who are more reminiscent of the Hanson brothers (for those of you who are too young to remember, Hanson was a pop group from Tulsa that fluttered teenage hearts in a series of videos in the 1990s) than of the Beatles. One minute Max is putting the moves on Harry, the next it's Harry putting the moves on Max. They have apparently connected sometime in the past, but their relationship is going nowhere now, and neither is this film. Too bad, because the actors are obviously game. I did like the tent scenes at the beginning, and I thought we might be in for a variation on "Brokeback Mountain" (which was not released until the following year), but Munch never lets his audience into the tent, so to speak, and we are left with a puzzle of a relationship that, frankly, isn't worth the unraveling.

Well, this is far from the best movie I've ever seen, but it certainly is not the worst. Not while the steaming pile that is the American version of "Godzilla" (aka: "101 Ways to Not Make a Good Movie") is still polluting the world.

This movie, as you know by now, is about a pair of male teen idol pop stars. One of them, Max, is clearly basically gay and knows it, the other is probably gay and still figuring it out. The brothers are both in love with each other to a great extent, and have on occasion had sex with one other.

Needless to say, complications arise from this.

The acting by both the leads is quite good, particularly Cole Williams, who looks quite tasty as a blond (especially when making out with Bryce Johnson and especially with his shirt gone). The dialogue is a little stilted, and in some ways felt more like a play than a movie. Also, I could have done without the awkward threesome attempt towards the end of the movie, though the final coda was good.

What keeps this movie from better than three stars? Well, it was short (74 minutes), the diaglogue was, as mentioned, a little stilted, and then there's the coda. Plus the price I paid was a little steep for such a short film, though the extras are alright.

Beyond that... something seemed to be faintly off with the film. I'm not sure what. It seemed like it couldn't decide if it wanted to be a comedy or a drama or both. Admitedly, there are those who say it's hard to play sibling incest for laughs, but I say they just haven't tried.

Still, despite the flaws, the movie was good and worth watching. If, like me, you have a thing for the idea of brothers together, this should be right up your alley... as it were...