Bully

★★★★

(2012)

Lee Hirsch's Bully is certainly a documentary which is ragged around the edges, it isn't perfectly well-formed, it nearly drowns itself in a backwash of unanswered questions and it often falls into the traps of making a factual point to the detriment of the film. But as fact and as an expose it is a seriously affecting and disturbing portrait of a young world pummelled by the cruelest of all individuals; The teenager. A series of kids shaped by their struggles within the American School system are the back bone of Hirsch's film which ends up fully uncovering itself as a lingering and admirable documentary.

The film's rating controversy in the US has already been much talked about. The Weinstein Company's push to drop the rating so that it could actually be seen by its intended audience is a fantastically telling look at the kind of censorship which has nannied the more serious aspects of being a teenager everywhere in the world. The battle resulted in a petition by teen Katy Butler to garner an unrated certificate which now has nearly half a million signatures. In a rare move by producers which is sincere and forward thinking Bully has indeed been passed with no classification, and rightly so.

The cause for concern was mainly a barrage of abuse hurled at one of our teens which rings true for anyone who has even set foot near a high school. Hirsch's set back camera cleverly capturing the mentality of children who not only see bullying as a sort of necessary evil in growing up but are almost proud of their control of the physically weaker members. What the film tries and succeeds wholly in doing is portraying a group of people wiser and more intelligent than the monsters pushing pins into them every day and although the area of suicide is the basis for the seriously stark finale, Hirsch's film is full of wonderful fleeting moments of strength, beauty, loss and regret.