There can only be a few people out there who did not feel different, alienated, or inferior at some stage during their adolescence. Imagine, though, what it must be like when this is your life for almost every day that you can remember. This, alas, is the plight of Ben (Greg Timmermans), a Belgian teenager who suffers from Asperger Syndrome.
Ben’s story is told in four interweaving parts. The first shows his life both in school and at home. In the former, he is the target of incessant bullying from the pondlife in his class. The second shows Ben’s childhood memories of either being prodded and probed by doctors or being teased and tormented by his classmates. The third strand presents documentary-style interviews with various family members and school friends and teachers, all of which seem to refer back to some awful event that has just happened. The final part then shows Ben’s online life in a role-playing game in which he excels and where he has built up a relationship with a girl called Scarlite (Laura Verlinden).
Hence, we see the two sides of Ben’s character. On the one hand, there is the part of him that perecives himself as a complete social misfit who finds emotions difficult to understand and who can never find the words to express himself. Online, though, Ben is a mighty hero who defeats all challengers, a strong individual in control of his own destiny, a gallant knight who protects his lady.
The plot, of course, seeks to exploit this dichotomy in his character. It essentially unfolds following a classroom scene where Ben is humiliated by the bullies in his class, with the awfulness of the moment captured by a dozen camera-phones. Ben is traumatised by the incident, further fuelling his deep unhappiness and already-prevalent thoughts of suicide. At the same time, however, his online relationship with Scarlite is actually reaching a point where they are speaking of meeting in the real world! The story goes on to explore in stark enough terms teenage-related themes such as alienation, depression, bullying, and the need for conformity. This all builds up to an ending that is effective, despite being a little overegged in terms of how it comes about.
One of the innovative flourishes given to this film by director Nic Balthazar is how he tries to give us insights ino Ben’s mind by melding computer imagery from the latter’s role-playing game into real world scenarios. For example, a game map is visible when Ben navigates his way to school or, when confronted by the bullies, he imagines them as towering brutish warriors. Another idea is to do extremely close-up shots of whoever is speaking to Ben, as well as distort and slow down the way that they speak to him. Beyond these techniques, Ben is always on hand to explain himself to us by way of voiceovers.
The film is clearly targeted mostly at a teenage audience, although there is certainly enough on offer to provide most people with food for thought. The anger shown by Ben’s mother (Marijke Pinoy) at the end is the anger that should really be in all of us when the weak get preyed upon in cowardly fashion by the strong.
What did I do to stop that from happening?
Filed under: Cinema, Films, Movies | Tagged: Ben X, Greg Timmermans, Laura Verlinden, Marijke Pinoy, Nic Balthazar
