Ben X; I Am Nothing (2007)
“In order to feel good, you need to learn
how to feel” - Scarlite
Despite
the fact that he has suffered from autism and Asperger’s syndrome all his life,
Ben (Greg Timmermans) is to attend a “normal” high school with all the other “normal”
students. For the past few years, he has been constantly bullied by his
classmates (especially by the two extra mean boys named Bogaert and Desmedt),
but this time, the class has somewhat “crossed the line” in taunting and
humiliating Ben. With that “incident” being a catalyst, Ben and his mother
begin a struggle to finally make things alright.
“This is my end game”- Ben X
Ben
views the world as if he is playing his favorite game of “ArchLord,” in which
he is called Ben X, level 80, heroic, and loved by his “healer” named Scarlite
(Lara Verlinden). The film does an excellent job in building a game-like
portrayal of Ben’s perspective of the world by, for example, intertwining Ben
as the actual human Ben, being all tense and nervous on the complicated streets
on his way to school and the fictional ArcLord character Ben X, going on a
quest while following a mouse cursor floating on the screen. Throughout the
film, the viewer can really experience the true assimilation of reality and an
MMORPG game, with all the game-like sound effects and BGMs.
The
running time of total 93 minutes basically deals with the dark situation that
Ben has faced all his life and the attempt to overcome such a situation; narrated
both in Ben’s first perspective, and in the third perspective of others
surrounding Ben. The scenes that frequently flip back and forth between the
first narrative of Ben and the recorded interviews of people certainly stresses
the intention of the director; he might have wanted to clarify what was going
on in the movie since half of Ben’s perspective was based on the computer
graphic scenes on ArchLord. However, despite the director’s initial intentions,
whether the interviews of such diverse people- his mom, dad, teachers and etc- actually
helped with the clarification or rather contributed to more distraction is
debatable.
Overall,
the movie is respectable in a sense that it faced many of the hot social issues
such as teenage game addiction and bullying. Nevertheless, bringing the film to
a personal level, it was rather disappointing. As a viewer that has an ex-game
addict older sister an therefore abhors
games in all shapes or forms, I did not enjoy a single part of Ben’s hypersensitive
game viewing eyes, the game like sound effects, nor the 3D computer graphics. Personally,
I give the movie 6 out of ten, for I couldn’t feel what Ben was learning to feel
even until the entire movie ended, but
rather I sympathized more with his younger brother that appeared on the screen for
less than 5 minutes in total.
Cast: Greg Timmermans (Ben), Laura Verlinden (Scarlite), Marijke Pinoy (Mom), Titus De Voogdt (Bogaert), Maarten Claeyssens (Desmedt) and Pol Goossen (Dad).
