Ben X review

Imagine a boy in front of flashing computer screen, clicking busily the mouse. Is he wasting his time alone or is he enjoying his free time, like typical teenagers? If a Korean is asked of this question, he or she must show negative impression of the boy. In fact, a computer game can be a useful tool to release someone’s stress outside a real world. However, we, Koreans are very eager to say that a computer game is lame and unproductive, in any cases. This prejudice might be the brocade that prevented me from understanding “Ben X” at the first time.

In Korea, most students experience excitement and joy of playing an online game. More and more games permeate to people lives through personal electronic devices. However, despite this general trend, people are acquainted with more gloomy and dark sides of online games. We often see the article that associate a criminal and addiction to violent games.

Ben is one who builds his haven in an imaginary world. We cannot judge whether his way of solving his problem is good or bad, yet it seems realistic. Although the adults around him try to understand him, the adults fail to encourage him to speak up. They overlook his difference, saying that Ben is academically okay, and even excellent. Later on as Ben gets trapped in more and more problems, they preclude that the exotic boy is extremely self-centered and not willing to communicate with others. In fact, Ben needs others’ help to escape from abysmal isolation. “He is way too slower than everyone else.”

 

In contrary, when Ben enters in the online, he becomes capable of controlling his appearance and pace. He can log in and out whenever he wants to. He is a muscular hero with level 80. Most importantly, there is a girl who waits for him and listens to him.

According to IMDb, Ben X is often pronounced “Bennicks”, which means “I am nothing” in Dutch. Ben pacifies himself when he logs in as Ben X, but he had to mend the discrepancy between his identity in the real world and in the cyber world in order to find his true identity. Moreover, as the movie goes on the watertight boundary between the two distant worlds starts to break away: the girl in the game tries to meet Ben in offline, and the bullies upload the video of Ben being taken off his pants. Ben compromises the two identities harmoniously, if not idealistically. He merges the image of his only supporter to the real world. With a help of his girlfriend, though she is only a false image, he is empowered to keep on living and share his feelings with others.

Realizing that Scarlite was not a real person, a movie “Beautiful Mind” came to my mind. “Beautiful mind” also deals with hallucinations, but in contrast with Ben X, the protagonist strives to escape from the hallucination. At last, he chooses to live along with the false image not to depend on medication. Though his psychological disease is incurable, he eventually finds his way not to be perturbed by the handicap. I think “Ben X” gives us similar solution for autism. Not every problem can be solved perfectly. In such cases, we have to find a way to live along with it.