This very sincere and highly emotive documentary that
covers the horrendous topic of bullying of school children by their peers has been generating a great
deal of media attention because it had initially been rated an ‘R’ movie thus
preventing it been shown to the under 17’s who are most affected by the
problem. The filmmakers took out a few
swear words to ease censor’s conscience who gave it a PG-13 rating, but now that
I have seen it (and been terribly moved) I’m not sure if its actually
compelling in such a manner that would it sufficiently have the correct
profound effect on a teenager.
Filmmaker Lee Hirsh follows the stories of several
children all from regular working class families across rural US. Two of the children have already committed
suicide, one at the mere age of 11 years old, and the other at 17. All their stories are undeniably tragic and
quite heart wrenching in the telling.
The presence of the camera following some of the children as they go
about their daily routines may have altered the balance slightly as the
perpetrates of the bulling seemed less prone to be caught on camera, but
nevertheless that still didn't defuse the reality that it was happening.
What is so painfully clear is that parents and school
staff alike are so unaware of the details of their children’s lives, and the
discovery of the problems seems to come as such a shock to them. The parents valiantly try to help and resolve
the situation by dealing with the matter head on, but on every occasion, without
a single exception they are met with either total denial by the school staff or their inability to deal with the issue, or much much worse, to simply keep
re-assuring the worried parents ‘we will deal with it’ and ‘it will get better’
and then doing nothing.
The weakness of the film is that is doesn't even start
to address any notion of any solution to bullying at all. It touches on issues such as racism and
homophobia but does not even hint on how these children and their families and
schools should start to address dealing with diversity and prejudice. It seems somehow a wasted opportunity. Three years ago I reviewed ‘Out In The Silence’
about a young gay teenager who had to be home-schooled as he was in fear of his
life, but his single-mom fought back and with help sued the District School Board
who were then forced to mandate a policy to deal with Hate Crimes in their
schools. And it made a difference not just by saving one young man’s life, but
in subsequent visits to the school, they had actually started a Gay Straight
Alliance group.
‘Bully’ does however send a powerful visual message at
the end of the movie when the two sets of very brave parents who lost their
children were so empowered to start a Campaign to help kids to speak out
against bullying in the memories of all the kids for whom its too late. Let’s
hope they do.
Have a large box of kleenex close by you. And then after you've watched it you may like to check out http://www.thebullyproject.com/ the social action campaign that this movie inspired.
