Do You Have Your 'Healer' Standing Beside You, Ben X?

• Title: Ben X
• Based on a novel inspired by a true story, Nothing Was All He Said.
• Genre: Drama Film, Documentary, Psychological Thriller 
• Starring:

        Greg Timmermans as Ben

        Laura Verlinden as Scarlite

        Marijke Pinoy as Ben's mother

• Rating: 

<Owl City - Fireflies>

-Good to read with music if you wish to truly dig into the feelings of Ben, 

as a similar toned electric synthesizer melody is frequently used in the film-

Ben X covers a wide range of issues regarding contemporary society: bullying, cyberspace etiquettes, teenage suicide, etc. In this striking film, such societal problems are blended well together with the more fundamental topic of intolerance. The narration of Ben, malicious actions of his ‘friends’ at school, comfort from his imaginary friend and supporter lucidly portrays the significance and necessity of tolerance and empathy in today’s world.

In director Nic Balthazar’s bizzare Belgian-Dutch film Ben X, Ben(Greg Timmermans), a teenage-boy with Asperger Syndrome who acts a bit ‘differently’ from others, constantly gets bullied made fun of in school. His mother(Marijke Pinoy) tries her best to let her son get along well in school by providing him with loving care. However, Ben despises the world he lives in and always escapes to his imaginary world of the game of Archlord, where he becomes a great warrior who usually meets and saves another player by the name of Scarlite(Laura Verlinden). Not able to stand his friends’ bullying anymore, Ben conceives a plan for a suicidal ‘endgame’ to take revenge on his peers.

This is film has a peculiar structure in that there is a documentary film inside the film itself, and the documentary part is the story of Ben’s ‘endgame’. This way, viewers get the sense of involvement in the film because they are technically watching the documentary film that the characters inside the movie are watching as well. The double-structure helps viewers to feel an intimate relationship between Ben and them.

The brilliance of the film is that it not only puts viewers in a close distance with the main character, but also actually lets viewers actually be Ben. Throughout the film, scene after scene, the director continually shows a similar counterpart portrayal of an action as how it would be depicted in an imaginary game world. Also, visual and auditory techniques are used: close-up screenshots of people’s mouths or eyes are constantly showed, and disco and psychedelic style music, with background noise of cars passing by, people shouting, and objects moving, is played very loudly. These two disturbing yet meaningful devices allow viewers to become the eyes and ears of Ben, feeling how hypersensitive Ben would perceive the world.

With the aforementioned techniques and devices, Ben X gradually builds up to its theme of tolerance and empathy. Scarlite, though she is in many aspects an imaginary character, is a kind-spirited individual who cares for Ben from the heart and empathizes with him mainly because she shares with him a part of his independent life-in the world of Archlord. The last words of Ben’s mother at the ending marks the highlight of the thematic tolerance when she says, “He is living”, despite the fact that Ben had been talking to himself all along. Here, viewers are told the moral of appreciating others who are different even if the are hard to understand or fully empathize with. After all, “we can’t play endgames without our healers”, just as Scarlite mentioned.