Bully

Shot in a style similar to Nick Broomfield’s early documentaries such as “Soldier Girls” and “Chicken Ranch”, in that there is no narration with the subjects of this documentary instead being followed and generally being left to tell their own story, which certainly makes for an interesting viewing experience, especially with no title cards to fill in the background information on his subjects it can also at the same time unfortunately make for a frustrating viewing experience.

Focusing on five different cases of bullying over the case of the film including the openly gay Kelby, whom has been outcast in her town due to her sexual orientation and Mississippi teenager Ja’Meya, whose bullying experiences lead her to pulling a loaded gun on her school bus. Amongst these cases aswell is Ty  and Tyler whose bullying experience sadly resulted in them both committing suicide rather than continue to endure the bullying anymore.

However the one case which the film chooses to follows most closely is that of Alex, who is your stereotypical bullying target, due to him being a socially awkward loner, who throughout the film is showing on the receiving end of both physical and verbal abuse, starting with a student responding to Alex’s cheerful quip of “Your my buddy” with a stream of abuse which includes threats of violating him with a broom handle! In fact so much is Alex targeted over the course of the film that the film makers are finally are forced to step in and alert both Alex’s parents and his head mistress of what is happening to him, which is also one of the few times that we actually see the schools trying to counter their bullying problem, while the rest of the time it seems like the parents can only make fruitless efforts to try and highlight the issue of bullying, while members of the school board uncomfortably make excuses for their lack of action.

While Alex is a great showcase for the sort of bullying which the film is trying to highlight, he is far from the most interesting case here, with perhaps alittle too much time dedicated to his happy home life and general bullying footage. Sadly as a result of this we get to see less of the case which are more interesting to watch such as Kelby, whose bullying is not limited to just her fellow students, but also comes from teachers aswell, were she comments that she has been forced to sit through classes, were teachers have been preaching about “Fags burning in hell”. Still the scenes with Kelby are certainly amongst the strongest her, as she remains determined to not let them beat her while equally and quite rightfully so feeling no shame for her lifestyle choices, even if it has resulted in her being treated like an outcast in her hometown.

Equally interesting here are the scenes with a former self-confessed bully who saw the error of his ways, which seem to link the reasons for bully’s behaviour being less about the much assumed broken home life or low self esteem, but instead more rooted in the desire to be popular and main that status by picking on those further down the social pecking order. It is a fascinating insight and one which helps give a full insight into the roots of the issue, even if the scene is so clumsily dropped in, that to the more casual viewer could just as easily be overlooked.

While seemingly set out with many big ideas on exposing the shortcomings of how bullying is being dealt with, the end result is sadly one which left me feeling largely indifferent, especially as the film has no real heart, thanks largely to Hirsch keeping his distance from his subjects and firmly keeping himself in the position of an observer. Equally frustrating is the documentary style which Hirsch has chosen to use here, as a narration would have been sorely welcome, especially with the film being low on facts and more a focus on personal experiences of his cases looked at over the film, which does in many ways prevent the films from being as hard hitting as I expected, while leaving me with the feeling that my time would have been better spent watching videos from “It Gets Better Project”, which honestly does more for the cause than I felt this film did, even if its focus is more on helping the youth of the LGBT community. Perhaps if used as a lecture tool this documentary would be more effective or just by adding a much needed narrator would benefit this documentary greatly. Until then it remains at best a talking point for dinner parties but far from the must see documentary you would hope it to be.