Film Review: Ben X (Junior Writing)

A nice reversal

Bullying has definitely become a significant social issue for the past several decades. Especially in recent years, news about students who committed suicide due to the stress of getting bullied frequently fill the front page of a newspaper. Great concerns have risen all around the world in order to cope with this social problem that is related not only with the bullied himself but also with the parents and the surrounding environment.

Regarding the strong social impact, it is of no surprise that bullying is commonly used as topics for various films, literatures and even pop musics. Ben X, a Belgian movie directed by Nic Balthazar, is also one of the films that set its main character as a boy who is seriously bullied by his classmates. This outcast named Ben is actually an autistic boy who has a problem of communicating with others in daily life. In the movie, there is one scene where Ben has his pants pulled down by other boys and becomes naked in front of the video camera. This scene vividly illustrates how severe the situation of Ben is, indicating that he must have been highly stressed by other students who attacks him both verbally and physically. 

For many viewers, the movie can seem quite boring with such a cliché of having Ben, a bullied boy, to commit suicide; but the last 9 minutes of the film changes everything. Everyone in his “funeral” thinks Ben has committed suicide and cries over on the bullying scene. At that moment, Ben suddenly stands in front of the projector, surprising people who previously thought he was dead. The last scene shows Ben and his mother having a good time in countryside, letting the film end happily and preventing it from being too typical. At first, when I only watched one-third of the whole movie, what came up in my mind as a possible ending was Ben killing everyone in his classroom, just like what Seung-Hee Cho did in Virginia Tech; I expected the film to be a tragedy since a lot of bullied kids live such a desperate life. The ending was definitely novel and even works very well as Ben gets healed in a peaceful, calm countryside. By this way, Ben is a hero, though bit unconventional, in that he becomes happy after going through all these struggles.

What I also liked about this film is its use of real Game in the plot. The director Nic Balthazar used the actual scene of the online game called ArchLord. This strategy emphasizes how strong Ben relies on virtual world in order to cope with the stress from the real life. In fact, he is so addicted to games that he does nothing except playing game at his home. As he walk into the school, he considers himself as a game character meandering in a stage. The actual scene and the game scene take turns to show the similarity between two of them. Among what I have watched, this is the first movie with actual game scene inserted, although there are definitely many films about playing games. 

Overall, Ben X, I would say, is a film that well-incorporated the significant social issue of bullying with some creative tactics such as a twist and a use of game scene. I was a bit bored in the middle because I easily predicted what would happen at the end. However, my prediction was proven wrong, and I was surprised but delighted at the same time to see such reversal.