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Friday 9 January 2009

Thin on the ground

Ben X
15, Key cities

Ben X is not a jolly kind of film, based as it is on the story that found Balthazar; the true story of an autistic teenager who committed suicide due to hellish, merciless bullying at school. Balthazar, on reading of the boy’s death, responded by writing a novel for adolescents which, in turn, was transformed into a multi-media stage performance — what is it about ‘multi’ and ‘media’ and ‘stage’ and ‘performance’ in the same sentence that makes my heart sink a little? — and then into this, his directorial debut. And?

OK, the film opens with Ben (Greg Timmermans) — who is meant to be 16, 17, I think, but looks a disconcerting 25 — and Ben saying, ‘I never tell lies. Everything I say is true, even when I don’t say anything.’ Still trying to work that out? Me, too. Anyway, it then flashes forward in time to a television interview with his mother (Marijke Pinoy) complaining gravely that ‘someone always had to die first’ before anything happens, before wrongs are righted. We know we now have to get from here to there, but who will die, and how, and will they have really died anyway?

Ben, who has Asperger’s Syndrome and so finds it difficult to communicate or relate normally, is being violently bullied at his mainstream school, yet finds respite in an internet fantasy game, Archlord, where, as Ben X, he can find strength and respect and even friendship with another online player, Scarlite. As the school situation worsens, he increasingly retreats into the game, the lines between fantasy and reality become blurred, and, with help from his virtual world, he plans how to exact revenge on his tormentors.

More articles from: Deborah Ross | this section

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