Product Description

From Christopher Munch, the director of The Hours and Times, comes this unforgettable tale of intense brotherly love. Harry (Bryce Johnson) is a 23-year-old former boy-band idol who is watching his 16-year-old brother Max (Cole Williams of Boys Life 4) follow in his footsteps. Harry escorts Max on a long-promised camping trip to Los Angeles' San Gabriel Mountains. What starts out as fun quickly turns serious as they bond in ways that neither could have anticipated. Artful and provocative, sexy and controversial, Harry and Max proves that the road to adulthood is never a straight line.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42721 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-07-19
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 74 minutes

Review
Boldly matter-of-fact and a little bit nuts. --Village Voice

Customer Reviews

My one true love...
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.

It really isn't about incest
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.

"You have to sheath your teeth"
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.