Ben X
Tags: fantasy, cruelty, dramatic, violence, revenge, alternate reality, flashback, romantic

Plot synopsis:
Teenage Ben is frequently bullied at school. To escape his harsh reality, he turns to a virtual world by playing an online game, ArchLord. In the game, he is a confident and brave hero. Moreover, he collaborates his adventures with another online user known in-game as Scarlite.
One day, Ben is being bullied again. During the class break, the bullies drag Ben on top of a table and pull his pants down, while classmates record the incident on their phones. With cruel remarks and teasing from his classmates, Ben becomes so humiliated and frustrated that he smashes the window with a chair. Ben is immediately sent to the headmaster's office, where the headmaster asks Ben to explain the incident. Ben, however, does not speak at all, leaving the issue unresolved. After that scene, it's revealed that Ben has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a form of autism. Things gets worse for Ben as the class incident gets posted on the internet. Feeling distraught about his life in general, Ben is even ready to leave his virtual world behind, where he tells Scarlite that he is ready to "endgame". Concerned, Scarlite sends a video message to Ben X (as Scarlite has no idea what Ben looks like) saying that there cannot be an endgame, unless there is a healer. Scarlite then tells Ben to meet her at the train station.
At the train station, Ben sees Scarlite, but does not go to her. Scarlite, assuming that Ben did not show up at all, goes to the train. Ben follows Scarlite onto the train and sits next to her, feeling nervous and excited at the same time. Just as the train approaches Brussels, Scarlite asks Ben if he is all right. Ben does not reply and goes off, leaving Scarlite behind. Having not talked to Scarlite, Ben was contemplating suicide by jumping off the platform. As Ben was ready to jump, he is pulled back and it's revealed that it's Scarlite who did so. She later tells Ben that he can choose to either give up and take his own life or take revenge and fight, just like he would in Archlord. But, to make the decision, he needs to devise a plan.
Ben (with Scarlite) asks his parents to help. He has decided to commit suicide by jumping off the ferry. He does so, and captures the suicide on tape. Afterwards, a funeral was held for Ben, with everybody, including the bullies being present. As the funeral went on, the video then changes to Ben and his speech (which seems like a suicide note video). In the video, the bullies are exposed (as well as the classmates involved) of what they have done to Ben that day of the incident. Then, to everyone's shock, it was revealed that Ben is alive, by his shadow seen over the video and Ben being seen from the projecting room. It turns out that Ben had chosen to take revenge on the bullies by faking his own suicide. It was revealed that as he jumped off the ferry, his parents had caught him at the lower deck, as part of the plan.
Afterwards, Ben, Scarlite, his mother, and his brother are at a horse ranch in the country. The horse instructor shows Ben how to be friendly with the horse and tells him that "You must learn to feel, in order to feel good". Ben touches the horse gently, just as the instructor told him and feels happy. Ben then goes to Scarlite and talks to her. The horse instructor looks baffled, as it is revealed that Ben is actually talking to himself. Ben's mother then tells the horse instructor that everything is fine and Ben is happy.

Review: The use of flashbacks thru out the film to explain Bens early childhood are extremely effective in conveying the listlessness that is felt by parents and children as they try and find out why their child is different.
Both the director Nic Balthazar and the actor who played Ben, Greg Timmermans addressed the crowd that night before the beginning of the film.
This is Greg Timmermans first film and he preformed beyond beautifully, bring subtlety to his role rarely seen by seasoned actors let alone a brand new face.
I hope that this film recedes world wide distribution for it is one of the most pointed comments I've ever seen or heard of on the treatment that children with these types of differences receive from classmates, teachers, and parents.
Lastly I would like to say that as the credits began to roll the audience roared forth with applause that did not cease completely for a full 3-5 minutes.I left this film with my tears proudly displayed on my cheeks.Good luck in competition to the cast and crew of BenX.
It turned out fine, the movie is beautifully shot.From the beginning on, the film makes you believe it's going to end in a predictable way but it had a good surprise ending.
Of note are the well thought out monologues of Ben X, using very little words to express what he feels (something he cannot do towards others).The movie also kept it's integrity in showing how most autistic people would probably be towards girls: mostly invisible.
Although Scarlite plays an important role in the film, she's mostly in Ben's mind.
There was definitely a statement in the film without handing out a clear solution.On a side note: personally I think autistic people should be able go to special schools.
They are in some ways very gifted and smart and should be cherished that way rather than treated as people with a problem that should constantly struggle to adapt.Back to the film: all in all it delivered all you could want from director Nic Balthazar who I only knew as host of TV show Filmfan and I knew it would have integrity because he is clearly an honest and personable guy.There's also a lot of nice extra's on the DVD including the game Archlord itself, overall a well thought out, complete film package!.
It just happened to be on TV and since it was an unknown title for me, the least I can say is that it totally surprised me.Never in my life have I cared so much about a character in a movie, Greg Timmermans made me forget that I was watching one.
No that's not true, I'll admit it, I cried like a baby, and that's not something I do on a regular basis.Although it's spoken in Dutch(luckily my own language), I still hope it will reach people through out the world, so that many can enjoy it, and learn the lesson that's been given here.Everybody, if you can find it, watch it and it will move you..
The cast (Greg Timmermans, Marijke Pinoy and Laura Verlinden) and director Nic Balthazar were also there and gave a short explanation about the movie and their experience making it.I had multiple reasons to go see this film, First of all, I like the idea of using the gaming community (which is so common among us youngsters these days ) to illustrate ones need to escape the real world and enter their own.
Secondly, I was curious about the performance of Greg Timmermans as Ben. I didn't know it was his first movie until he himself said it, moments before it began.
From beginning until end, you are moved by the world of Ben. His relation to his parents, "friends" , and the world itself.He explains his feelings through his Gaming alter ego BenX in the game ArchLord, why he is who he is.Everyone was touched, seeing this movie and we gave it a standing ovation during the credits.So go see this movie if you can, it's definitely worth it and you won't be disappointed.Greetings RafkeP.S.
For me, it was probably the best movie I've seen about bullying and adapting to modern society when you don't fit the mold, when you're not particularly socially adept.
Hopeffuly, after this movie, you will try and successfully you will make your children to think for themselves, with their own brain and heart.Like his father said: "his problem were people, not his illness" And there are many other examples who sadly...
It's essentially just your typical boy-getting-bullied-at-school drama, with a talking heads docu-drama feel thrown in along with some effectively unpleasant scenes of bullying (including forcing an ecstasy tablet down the victim's throat in the end to blot it out) as well as clever touches as using the boy's obsession with online video games to compliment fighting with his enemies in real life.
He plays his favourite online computer game Archlord all of the time, trying hard to train himself for the real world that he lives in.
I found this film to be an excellent movie, that includes a lot a senses of bullying, and violence towards Ben from the other children in his class.
Overall, great movie, everyone all over the world should see this one and maybe everyone should start to think a bit like Ben X.
I was really touched by this movie and by the way of Ben's thinking.
The scenes where Ben is portrayed show his personal cage very well, both by the excellent film making and the way the actor plays him.
I couldn't be more wrong!If you don't know how a guy suffering the Asperger syndrome (a form of autism) feels, this is THE movie by excellence.
I caught this on TV, and what got my attention was that it involved online gaming, since I'm a gamer, I stayed and watched it thinking it was a fantasy movie.
This movie is beautiful, it has great soundtrack and the actor playing Ben is amazing.
There have been many movies about Asperger's syndrome lately, but this gave us a whole new perspective of a boy living in Belgium, hiding behind an online game character.
Nic Balthazar's feature film debut is a brave and visually symptomatic depiction of the harrowing consequences of social repression, that portrays the life of emotive teenager Ben who lives with his mother and younger brother in the city of Brussels.
He has Asperger's syndrome and through the years he has been bullied so much that he has escaped into the computer game MMORPG Archlords virtual role-play world where he is a confident and courageous warrior.
Ben uses this game to prepare for the unliveable reality at school where he goes under nicknames such as "Frankenstein" and "The man from March", but however hard he tries to adjust he always ends up in front of his computer with his head drained by suicidal and vengeful thoughts.
Former Belgian film critic Nic Balthazar's first film is an adaptation of his own novel "Nothing was all he said", which is inspired by a true story about a 17-year old boy with mild autism who committed suicide by jumping from the Gravensteen castle in Gent because of bullying.
The film plays out in three alternative worlds; Ben's social realistic everyday life, the fictive computer game world in Archlord and the divided world inside Ben's head that balances on a thin line between reality and fantasy.
Nic Balthazar's experimental filming creates a good pace which is accelerated by a soundtrack that really serves it's purpose considering the films serious depiction of themes such as alienation, collective bullying, autism, identity crises, suicide and courage.The title of the film refers to the Dutch phrase "(Ik) ben niks" which means; (I) am nothing.
Through Nic Balthazar's creative direction, frequent use of close-ups and Greg Timmerman's unrestrained performance this movie is able to project the protagonist's versatile states of mind on the viewers.
In his debut, Nic Balthazar skillfully mixes different social topics: addiction to video games, autism and also school bullying.
The video game universe provides Ben with a perfect shelter in which he finds the strength to continue living in real life.
At the end, the film leads to wonder where the limits between reality and fiction are and it also shows that a video game can have both negative and positive consequences in the real world.
They decide to go on a quest with help from their parents.I really like the way the movie tries to bring Asperger point of view to the audience.
Actor Greg Timmermans gives of one his career's best performances as 'Ben'-an autistic young man who is completely cut off from outside reality.It is the world of online games that gives him some moments of happiness and peace.
Apart from dealing with different lives,director Nic Balthazar deals with nefarious effects of bullying on a youngster.In a fairly decent manner,one gets to see how some troublemakers use their victim's innocence in order to harass their victim.The relief comes in the form of Ben's mother.One needs to praise all the help and support he gets from his mother.All mothers would endorse the manner in which she does everything to help Ben from falling into bad hands.
Ben also has no way out, since even the atmosphere of our planet is deadly for him (he has a bad heart, and the stress caused by being in the urban infrastructure can have extremely negative consequences) of this kind of psychological relief is vital to him.Subject of care of people in online games, and a literal departure, when throwing a job or to part with loved ones for the sake of staying in an illusory world is certainly relevant.
That's just not a movie about it, he, of course, touches upon this subject, but only indirectly, although in many reviews of wrongly focus on computer-dependent Ben.Ben constantly think in terms of the game, obviously it helps him, at least in part, to find a foothold in reality incomprehensible to him.
Roughly speaking, a person has a long and severely beaten, in order to instill in him an understanding of the simple fact that Ben - also a man.Due to an interesting story, the director's findings, transferred to the screen the status of mentally abnormal, the acting brilliant, I can safely put in a number of all the films mentioned above.
Movies about characters with disabilities usually focus on how the personal deficiencies were overcome, with everyone, especially the audience, feeling good in the end.
This is a well-photographed movie with a good script, very well acted by all, especially Timmermans and Verlinden, but the treatment of a disabled life really stinks.Tito Alquizola ##.
I was not really impressed, there was some good acting involved, but indeed the character that plays Ben was too old to be Ben. And some things didn't feel right and didn't even fit in.
You sure feel like you're about to start a game when you "enter" the movie.
Integrating scenes from the virtual world of online gaming into the main story, the film blurs the distinction between the internal world of Ben's mind and the reality he faces daily and, with Ben as the narrator, the effect can be fragmented, leaving doubt about what is real, and what is not, a situation that creates some confusion.Ben X is also the story of the struggle of Ben's mother (Maijke Pinoy), a woman relentlessly devoted to her son without receiving any affection in return.
Although the film tells us that it is based on a true story and opens with an ominous warning that in video games and life "someone always has to die", we root for Ben and hope that he will discover a larger sense of self.
However, when classmates, Bogaert (Titus de Voogd, Belgium's hottest young actor) and Desmedt (Maarten Claeyssens, two of the most obnoxious bullies ever seen on screen, pull his pants down in the front of the class while others stand around and watch or film it on their mobile devices, we fear the worst.When this is posted on the internet for everyone in the school and in his family to see, Ben downloads a document entitled "101 Ways to Kill Yourself", creates a dagger in shop class, and enlists Scarlite in devising an end game that takes the film in an astonishingly new direction.
Ben X is visually stunning and the first feature-film for Greg Timmermans who, though he looks too old for the role, conveys Ben's internal struggle with amazing authenticity.
Based on the best-selling book Nothing Was All He Said that also became a play, the film pulls no punches in its depiction of the extent of bullying taking place in the school, with only passive concern from teachers and administrators.
Not much can be said about "Ben X" without disclosing spoilers, however, so I'll just say that Ben is a high school boy who has trouble distinguishing between his real life and the characters in the video games he's addicted to.
Ironically for an Aspie, Ben X moved me like no other movie I can think of, a couple of time I almost burst into tears.
These situations are all too often only narrowly missed by people with Aspergers.The acting was very good as was the attention to detail, the main character was portrayed very well (the actors debut by all accounts)and the story has a satisfying and heart rending conclusion...If you like your movies raw with the meat of human experience then you owe it to yourself to see Ben X.....
The film works on so many levels, and never insults the intelligence of the audience nor does it trivialize anything- Ben's relationships, the bullying, his autism, his dreamworld- it is so well crafted.
Somehow -I don't know how- I survived all that and can tell anyone who might find fault in this film that the depiction of what Ben suffers is not an exaggeration, not in any way.
In fact, Ben's world is ideal except where it has to merge or overlap with ours.That intersection, in the end, is the point of it all, and the tension in watching it all.
I don't say this movie needs a non-happy ending, I only say I felt like it was forced happily.
In fact, Ben, the teenage protagonist of Nic Baltazar's first feature film, has lost contact to the world that surrounds him and does not want to play any role in it.
The answer is that Ben has created a parallel world of his own, playing online games.
In cyber space he has met a girl who uses the name of "Scarlite", and who has become a collaborator in his adventures and even a kind of confidant or friend who intuitively guesses what is behind his plan to play the so-called "endgame": he is planning to commit suicide, and almost instantaneously she volunteers to be his "healer".But the meeting in the real world turns out to take shape in the only way that seems to be possible for a guy that is suffering from the Asperger syndrome: Although Ben sees Scarlite at the train station, he is unable to communicate with her.
Ben again cannot respond in a way a non-autistic person would do, and he hurriedly escapes from the train and loses track of Scarlite.Is this the end?
Although the idea that autists are able to develop such a feeling must be new even to experts, the facts of the film are quite clear: Ben has become attached to Scarlite - or the idea of Scarlite - and after she saved him from suicide, he accepted her as a kind of personal healer.
This is an original film made by Nic Balthazar (I didn't know his name till the end of the movie) with a twist-end.
It is not so predictable (and I have to say again, foreign films have a lot of unique movies that can surprise me every time) even if it has the idea of bullying behind it.
It is sad that this movie is based on real events that happen everywhere in the world.
Scenes from the world of online gaming are integrated into the main story making it clear of what Ben would do if he was still in the virtual world but leaves doubts about what is real and what is not.
This might look like another game film but its everything part from that.
Here starts the first problem - Ben is in a constant hypervigilance state, while seeming to have great mental abilities (like shown in a doctor's appointment where he can record in his memory dozens of characters by just looking at them), yet has hallucinations too (as seen in the end of the movie).
Suddenly he was getting better at that state of the movie and out of nothing, with a lot of minutes for the film to end, he decides to commit suicide (dead bodies or wounds are not displayed).
As the movie suggested, Ben-X would have good mental capacities so bringing some more elaborated suicide, or some other plan, would have been so much better.For last, the movie is about some serious issues like autism, discrimination, school bullying, etc.
This movie could have had a much more serious environment, and specially a Ben who'd express more feelings other than non-stopping distrust, like anger, depression, etc.;).
Greg Timmerman is is excellent in the lead, but also looks a little old for the role, which takes a little something away from the reality, and heartbreak of the film.
Some elements in the movie didn't work as intended, and have a rushed and clumsy feel about them (thinking especially about Ben's imaginary-or-not girlfriend Scarlite).
I really thought that having the idea of adapting the game features into real life is good..