(Movie) Bang Bang You’re Dead directed by Guy Ferland

This is an honest and brutal look at the culture that breeds the tragedy like Columbine. This movie shows that when we mourn the tragedy, we should mourn not only the victim of the shooting but also the one who shot them. Which is difficult. Which is where the story that is told in the movie comes like a paradigm shift.

Its not that movies about ones who shoot have not been made. But somehow, I have always found them to portray them as either stereotyped isolated, depressed, video-game addicted teenagers who take out their angst or perversely they have been portrayed as somehow ‘cool’.

This one is different. This one shows what happens behind the curtains, so to say, which makes them take up the gun and kill without thought for the consequences (or inspite of them). It is easy to stereotype what we don't understand and what we fear. This movie tries to break it and is largely successful.

Trevor (played by an intense Ben Foster) is a student who is reviled and feared since he threatened to blow up the football team – except the bomb he used was an intentional dud. As the story progresses, we unravel why he turned from a model student into a loner who is described by the student community as dangerous and who is feared by the parents of the students who see him behind every conspiracy…all symptoms of an unknown fear…

The reasons is the an alienation born out of a culture that demands conformance to a certain clique or sub-group. If you don't belong, you would be a loner. Which is when you may get bullied or worse. The  result are seething teenagers with no outlet except the obvious one…

The climax of the movie is well made, when Trevor plays Josh in the play “Bang Bang you’re dead”, whose life is eerily similar except Josh goes over the line and Trevor doesn't…which is what people forgot…

The ending is idealistic as well, since its very seldom that the system that is portrayed in the movie, gives the troubled teenagers a chance to be understood..but a teacher like Val Duncan is also idealistic, which is not to say that it doesn't happen. Though I found the positive ending appealing.

At the end I was heavily reminded of something that Marilyn Manson said in the documentary “Bowling for Columbine” when asked what he would have said to the teenagers who perpetrated the massacre at Columbine. He said “I would have listened to them…something no one did”

Listening is what this movie teaches us…listen…

Labels: drama, movies

posted by Protik Basu @ 8:53 PM