Movie review: The anatomy of cruelty in 'Bully'

Alex Libby, 12 years old and one of the subjects of Lee Hirsch's documentary, "Bully".

 

We shift to the present day and follow around the three major characters: students from high schools in Iowa, Mississippi and Oklahoma during the 2009 to 2010 school year. The narrative gets diffuse as we jump from character to character. There’s 12-year-old Alex from Sioux City whose unusually large nose, weirdly-shaped face, thin physique, and nerdy glasses make him an easy target. His daily tribulations start on the school bus where he’s subject to pencil pokes, chokes, slurs, curses and threats. 14-year-old Ja’Meya is black and smart and sweet. But she was picked on every morning and afternoon of the hour-long bus ride between home and school. One day, she’d had enough and packed her mother’s pistol to scare off the bullies. The rest of the children took her down and the parents of the bullies did the rest, pressing charges against her for multiple felony counts. The movie takes us to the Mississippi juvenile detention facility, where she’s currently imprisoned.   If you think you’ve had it tough, try being 16-year-old Kelby Johnson. Not even her all-star athlete credentials could save her from the onslaught of hate and vitriol from her Bible-belt classmates for being a lesbian. When we follow her around, we find that she’s more fortunate than the previous two because she does have friends (and a girlfriend!). But she’s had to leave her sports teams because of the attacks and is hanging in there, refusing her parents’ offer to pack up and relocate. Your heart will likely go out the most to Alex. He’s got a perennial good guy disposition (and even defends his bullies by telling his parents they’re “just messing around”) and he wants what every new kid in school wants: to fit in. But the cruelty escalates, and soon even the filmmakers are unsure whether Alex is indeed safe in the bus or in school. They deliberate whether they need to intervene. Of course you want the underdog to fight back at some point, but the docu maintains its middle ground that violence is not the answer—further illustrating how, in great detail, the average American school kid cannot defend himself against oppression or cruelty. It becomes clear that “Bully’s” mission is to bombard us so full of pathos that it overflows the brim, and our own emotions spill down to wet our shoes. It has an exhausting insistence. Aside from talking to the principal, none of the families take steps to arm their children with the means to strike back—except for Ja’meya, who threatened to do a “Falling Down.” “I was bullied throughout middle school and much of my childhood,” said director Lee Hirsch. “Bullying was a subject I wanted very much to explore in a film...But it stayed an abstraction for a long time—I was too scared to start developing the idea in earnest because it would mean confronting my own demons, and revisiting a painful period of my life.” I guess that answers my question: where is the point of view of the bullies? Why not follow them around, question them about their motivations (since there are talking heads aplenty here) for hurting Alex or Kelby or Ja’meya, to shed more light on the situation? Hirsch aimed his sights (and its most frustrating parts) squarely at educators and school authorities. He shows their passitivity, their incompetence and their unbelievable idiocy in the face of abuse. He states how dismissing an issue simply isn’t enough anymore. Not when students are hanging themselves from closets because of intolerance. One of the most mind-blowing scenes is when Alex is called into the principal’s office and asked to report about the daily abuse he receives. (Am paraphrasing here, mind.) “‘Did you report the things they did to you before? You’ve got to tell us and trust that we’ll do something about it,” said the principal. “I did. He lifted my seat on the bus and sat on my head, and you did nothing about it,” responded Alex. After a long pause: “How do you know I didn’t do anything about it? Did he sit on your head again after you told me?” “No,” shrugged Alex. “But he did other things after that.”   It all works, though. Never mind the pell-mell narrative, and how it veers smack into propaganda. My friend (a single woman), was in a crying jag by the time Ja’meya is released from juvenile prison. And we weren’t even halfway through. It’s a complex and thorny issue, no doubt. And one that doesn’t owe its woes to environmental factors. For my part, I assume it must have been a directorial decision not to film a student who attends a public school in the inner city. Say, the black and Latino communities of Detroit or LA? Those are tough neighborhoods replete with gangs and organized crime. Hirsch must have clocked that the context would deflate his theme too much. I respect that, but some context would have provided clarity. Still, you won’t be prepared for the violence visited upon the characters—especially Alex (thanks to the small Canon 5D Mark II that Hirsch filmed with). No one holds back from hitting and cursing, no one speaks up when a teen the size of a safe chokes him, and the bus driver looks at her rearview mirror at all the ruckus. . .and continues to drive. — BM, GMA News “Bully” is rated PG-13 and is now screening at all major theaters. Proceeds from the movie will be used to provide free screenings in public schools across the Philippines through the “Not in Our School” anti-bullying campaign.