Burny Bos, Peter Bouckaert, Erwin Provoost, Michiel de Rooij and Sabine Veenendaal
Screenplay:
Nic Balthazar
Music:
Praga Khan
Cast :
Ben: Greg Timmermans
Mother: Marijke Pinoy
Scarlite: Laura Verlinden
Jonas: Cesar De Sutter
Coppola: Gilles De Schrijver
Desmet: Maarten Claeyssens
Bogaert: Titus De Voogdt
Father: Pol Goossen
Sabine: Tania Van der Sanden
Psychiatrist: Peter De Graef
Metal teacher: Jakob Beks
Religion teacher: Johan Heldenbergh
Ben (age 6): Bavo Smets
In Ben X,
Ben (Greg Timmermans) is obsessed by an massive multiplayer online role-playing game, aka MMORPG, called Archlord and
the film's title forms his character name within that game. From what I know about World of Warcraft, it looks fairly
similar to that. Like any teenager, he doesn't much fancy having to venture out into the real world even though he knows he
has to and, as such, he likens everything he sees in reality to that of the gaming world. However, Ben is much more insular
than the average kid and his only real contact with another human is with online companion Scarlite (the very cute Laura Verlinden).
As he goes about his solitary life, he recounts traumatic experiences as a child and, interspersed, we get what are effectively
vox pop pieces with relatives, friends and figures in authority, portraying a lad that gets bullied frequently at school, since
we learn Ben's autistic and the bullies don't understand that their actions look set for the whole thing to end in tears. The
aforementioned pieces to camera also often talk in despondent terms about Ben which makes you wonder greatly about what's to come.
Timmermans gives an exceptional performance as the troubled Ben. When it comes to some of the things he goes through, on the
one hand I really feel for his plight, while on the other when I see him missing a chance to better his life I want to slap
him six ways from Sunday and it made me practically have my head in my hands shouting at him to get on with what he should do!
(Note that I'm trying so hard not to give any spoilers here, but if you've a heart then you'll feel the same way as I do).
Overall, although this came out effectively on the last Monday of 2008, it's early 2009 as I'm reviewing this and I can easily
proclaim this the first must-see DVD of 2009. While it suffers from a lack of supplimentary material, the film is an outstanding
piece of work and is one of those few films that you can feel yourself really enjoying it while you're watching it. It takes
you through a range of emotions as Ben's situations play out right from start to finish and I can't recommend it highly enough.
An English-speaking remake is already planned for this year, it seems, although I couldn't find any further details at the time
of writing this review. However, I wish I could urge the filmmakers to cancel that idea and just show the perfect original
instead. Big congrats to director Nic Balthazar for making such a wonderful debut.
The film is presented in a 16:9 anamorphic widescreen ratio, but is slightly windowboxed. This is something most people won't
notice unless they're viewing on a flatscreen TV as a CRT TV will always have some overscan that can't be got rid of. I was
also watching the DVD on an Xbox 360, upscaled to a 37" plasma screen and it gives a fantastic detailed picture. Often there
are semi-close-ups on the faces of the cast as they give a piece to camera and this shows the definition really well.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound gives clear dialogue and great ambient sound when required, often resembling Ben's own experiences,
and while this isn't a special FX movie we have Praga Khan to thank as they sure know how to put together an encapsualing
soundtrack to accompany the subject matter.
The only extras to view on the DVD are two versions of the trailer, one subtitled (1:50) and one in the original language
(1:41). They're both fairly similar and actually are both in Dutch but only the first has English subtitles. Oddly, the trailers
are in 2.35:1 (anamorphic widescreen) so it looks like a wider print could have been struck for theatrical distribution, but
if that was the case then it's likely the DVD was too, so it could just be for effect given that the film was shot on HDTV
video and will have a native ratio of 16:9, and that the trailers just crop this image top and bottom.
There's also one other important extra, and while it's not my type of game, personally, for those who are fans you get to
play Archlord itself which can be installed by putting this DVD in your PC.
There are also some trailers not relating to this film prior to the main menu. I didn't watch them but DVD
companies should really understand that the place for trailers is in the EXTRAS menu...
The menus are all static and silent, there are subtitles in English only which are burned into the print and the disc
contains 12 chapters, so over the course of 90 mins it could really do with a few more as I work on the average of one per
five minutes, plus opening and closing credits.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
In Ben X,
Ben (Greg Timmermans) is obsessed by an massive multiplayer online role-playing game, aka MMORPG, called Archlord and
the film's title forms his character name within that game. From what I know about World of Warcraft, it looks fairly
similar to that. Like any teenager, he doesn't much fancy having to venture out into the real world even though he knows he
has to and, as such, he likens everything he sees in reality to that of the gaming world. However, Ben is much more insular
than the average kid and his only real contact with another human is with online companion Scarlite (the very cute Laura Verlinden).
The film is presented in a 16:9 anamorphic widescreen ratio, but is slightly windowboxed. This is something most people won't
notice unless they're viewing on a flatscreen TV as a CRT TV will always have some overscan that can't be got rid of. I was
also watching the DVD on an Xbox 360, upscaled to a 37" plasma screen and it gives a fantastic detailed picture. Often there
are semi-close-ups on the faces of the cast as they give a piece to camera and this shows the definition really well.
