Bully

LITTLE ROCK — It’s not my job to tell you what movies to see or not see. And I try to avoid broad pronouncements that might be churned into advertising by studio publicists. So I want to say this upfront, so that there’s no mistake: Bully is not a great movie, it is a problematic movie that, had it not been the focus of a highly publicized ratings debate (that quite possibly was ginned up by Harvey Weinstein as a kind of stunt), probably would not have made much of an impression on the American consciousness.

But even so, if you are a parent or grandparent of school-age children you should see this movie. You should take your kids or grandkids to see this movie. And you should hope that what they see makes them cry.

Given the subject matter, it seems small-hearted to criticize the director’s aesthetic choices and editing decisions. Some things are more important than pacing or the quality of light. I know people don’t go to movies for moral instruction, but Bully is a movie that tells stories you should hear even- especially - if they break your heart.

I am not naive about how things are - I know that the reason Bully has become a movie people are talking about has a lot to do with Harvey Weinstein, who bought the distribution rights to the film about a year ago, the day after it screened at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Until Weinstein stepped in, the filmmakers were planning a “grassroots distribution strategy.” They weren’t sure their movie would play in a lot of theaters, and they planned to make it available to churches and schools and anyone who might show it for a dozen people in a private home or on the side of a garage. They didn’t think of it as a particularly lucrative commercial venture, they saw it as a little movie that might make a difference with the relative few people who saw it.

On the other hand, bullying is a subject that has been in the news lately; with the 2010 suicides of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince and 18-year old Tyler Clementi resulting in criminal charges being brought against their schoolmates. And the Motion Picture Association of America’s shortsighted decision to saddle the film with an R rating based on some rough language (which remains in the film; another sequence was trimmed in order to attain the current PG-13 rating) gave Weinstein a chance to rant and rave and drum up interest in the film.

But when Weinstein says he wasn’t playing “the showman” to drum up business for this film, I believe him. Because Bully is a sobering experience, a journey into the pain of five families in four states. It is an essay on casual cruelty and the consequences of social isolation. It is a movie about victims.

In Sioux City, Iowa (where Hirsch and crew were given remarkable access to the school system), we meet 12-year-old Alex, a scrawny outsider with Asperger’s syndrome who is routinely abused and humiliated, especially on the school bus. When his parents ask him about his experiences, he defends his tormentors, insisting they were “just messing around.” He seems to really believe his torturers are his friends. For if they’re not, he asks, what “friends” does he have?

In rural Mississippi, we’re introduced to 14-year-old Ja’Meya, who pulled out a handgun on a crowded bus after enduring years of harassment. As the Yazoo County sheriff runs down the 45 felony counts against her with a look of smug bureaucratic satisfaction, he seems just another link in a long chain of clueless adult enablers.

In rural Oklahoma, we meet the Smalleys, who believe their 11-year-old son Tyler committed suicide because of bullying.

“If I were king of the United States,” Tyler’s best friend, a self-described “former bully” says, “I’d do away with popularity. Because then everyone would be equal.”

Also in Oklahoma, we meet 16-year-old Kelby, a tough girl with an indomitable spirit who was an outsider long before she came out as a lesbian. Somehow, Kelby has managed to cope - gathering around her a small circle of friends and causing her own father to reassess his views on homosexuality.

Bully is very good at humanizing the victims of bullying while wisely refraining from demonizing the individual kids who commit these atrocities (most of whom have their own serious problems). But there are problems with the movie - the most serious one being the fifth case study Hirsch presents, that of 17-year-old Ty Long of Murray County, Ga., who hanged himself, his parents allege, because of years of bullying. While there’s evidence that Ty was bullied, it has been pointed out - most notably by Emily Bazelon, an editor at Slate who frequently writes about bullying - that there were other factors that likely contributed to Long’s suicide - he had attention deficit disorder as well as Asperger’s and had recently broken up with his girlfriend. Bazelon says Hirsch’s account of Long’s story is “utterly one sided” and “factually questionable.”

Less worrisome, but still curious, is the decision to focus on kids in small towns and rural areas. Are there no well-off kids in Santa Monica or Manhattan who are also bullied?

There also seems to be a not-so-subtle class bias at work in the film, the poor grieving parents invite empathy but - it must be said - there’s also a hint of snobbery here. More than once during the film I had the queasy feeling the film was pandering to some unwholesome voyeuristic itch - there are times when Hirsch’s camera coughs up images that might be at home on peopleofwalmart.com.

Yet I meant it when I said this movie should be mandatory viewing in schools. Mean people suck, and cruelty begets cruelty. We ought to be sick of it.

Bully

87

Cast:

Documentary

Director:

Lee Hirsch

Rating:

PG-13, for language and intensity

Running time:

94 minutes