VALLEY OF SHADOW
by Howard Schumann

If you remember your high school experience, you may agree that there is a widespread distrust of not just anyone different but anyone perceived as being intelligent. In Belgian director Nic Balthazar’s Ben X, Ben (Greg Timmermans) is not only highly intelligent but is different - very different. Ben has Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism that causes social isolation, physical clumsiness, abnormal speech patterns, and limited areas of interest. With Ben, we see it in the way he goes through his morning rituals of washing and dressing, saying goodbye to his mother, and the tense way he walks to school, listening to his walkman without expression as loud music booms in his ears.

We also see it in Ben’s obssession with the video game "Archlord" which he plays every morning before going to school. Called “Frankenstein” and “the Martian” at school, in the computer game he is a powerful figure, everything he cannot be in the real world – hero and ruthless slayer of enemies. He also has a love interest, a virtual girlfriend named Scarlite (Laura Verlinden) who is his healer. 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 (Marijke Pinoy), a woman relentlessly devoted to her son without receiving any affection in return. She suffers when Ben goes to school and is fearful when he comes home. She knows that school for Ben is a harsh reality, one he never talks about. 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. Balthazar has said that he hopes the film (which will soon get a U.S. remake) will open discussions about bullying in a country where ten percent of teens admit that they have attempted suicide. That would be a most welcome end game.

If you have ever visited a cemetery and thought about the life story behind a particular gravestone or wondered what was going on inside the minds of visitors, Heddy Honigmann’s haunting documentary Forever may shed some light. Honigmann is not a name that comes immediately to mind when we think of the world’s great documentarians, but this work by the obscure Dutch director may place her in that elite category. Shot at the world famous Père-Lachaise cemetery, the largest in Paris, the film explores the thoughts and feelings of those who have come to the gravesites to pay tribute to famous people such as Chopin, Modigliani, Apollinaire, Balzac, Proust, and Oscar Wilde, as well as ordinary folks who lived and loved and have been remembered. It is a moving experience that engages both the mind and the heart.

The film opens with the story of pianist Yoshino Kimura, a young Asian woman who performs the work of Frederic Chopin as a means of connecting with her deceased father who loved his music. Scenes of Ms. Kimura playing the pensive melodies of Chopin’s Nocturnes in concert are shown as the camera offers loving close ups of the pianist, the emotion revealed in her eyes. Another segment is about an Iranian taxi driver who tends to the grave of Persian poet Sadegh Hedayat. Quoting from Hedayat’s The Blind Owl, he says that he left home because of he was weary with his life in Iran and now aspires to be a singer of Persian classical songs, though he drives a taxi to stay alive. Persuaded by Honigmann to sing before the camera, the man provides a tune based on the poetry of Hafez, and the mournful melody seems to embody all the sadness in the history of Père-Lachaise.

Although some connect with the work of great artists, stories of ordinary people are shown as well. An elderly Spanish woman speaks at the gravesite of her husband, telling how they fled Spain because of Franco and his murderous priests. A young man from Korea explains how he came to appreciate the novels of Marcel Proust but can only tell us what they mean to him in his native Korean language. An older woman talks about her husband’s death from a bee sting and how their three years together were the happiest of her life.

One of the most moving sequences is that devoted to an obscure poet named Elisa Mercouer whose story is told by Bertrand Beyern, a guide who leads tours through Pére-Lachaise. When Mercouer died in 1835 at the age of 26, her mother had her poems imprinted on her gravestone, yet now the letters have faded and with it Elisa’s claim on immortality. Although the stories weave a web of nostalgia and loss, Forever is not a depressing film but a celebration of life, a poignant tribute to the people who lie buried beneath its exquisite grounds and an appreciative paean to the enduring power of art.


©2008 Howard Schumann
CineScene