When We Were Bullies

This documentary is an affront to victims of bullying and the following explains why: The filmmaker himself is the bully from the past, which would still be okay if he approached the matter in a self-reflective manner. But he doesn't do that, instead he draws an explanation for his actions that could hardly be cheaper and more mendacious. Because towards the end of the short documentary he explains that he does not contact the victim of bullying, as allegedly originally wanted, and ask for an interview, but rather writes a letter. The reason is that he does not want to bring people into a new forced situation and did not want to end up clichéd with the strength of those who lead a successful life despite being bullied. In truth, however, he does not find out what consequences his bullying had on the victim. His letter is the height of spiritual poverty. There he justifies his actions with the pain he had in himself because his brother died in the fourth grade. This pain specifically made him bully and torment this other boy. His reading of these events is that everyone carries pain within themselves and that then connects everyone - including him and his victim of bullying. This is outrageous and rightly provokes anger for viewers. Because it would even be possible that the bullied person also experienced pain from a loss, just not bullying others because of it. The emotional pain of both is just not comparable, because the bully reduces the pain of the bullied to what he did to him. What the bully did, however, he supposedly did out of an equal pain ... and, in the opinion of the poor filmmaker, that connects the two. Aha. In fact, the bully seems to be looking for an excuse for himself. Today, as a grown man, he prefers to talk about his pain and he does this by not only comparing his pain with the pain of his victim, but even equating it. It's disgusting and so weak that looking at it doesn't squeeze your tear gland, but instead the food comes up again.

There was no deep meaning to be gleaned from this story. The ego of the filmmaker and those who participated were dismissive of their own actions while trying to shift blame away from these animals.

There was one woman (with a c) interviewed who claimed to feel guilty while smiling and laughing through her entire interview. She seemed particularly proud of herself.

You can easily sum up this very bad movie when at the end of the film the director says..."felt bad for the way you were treated" instead of "felt bad for the way WE treated you." What a joke.

Self serving, self congratulatory trash. The worst kind of human trauma exploitation. Could this man not have at least read a book about the lasting effects of child abuse? "I guess I'm not as sensitive as I thought..." You have no idea.

I'll start off to say at the outset that I was bullied relentlessly in school. The first observation I have is that I turned out ok, and I have a good life. I've been successful. The second observation I have is that, despite my adaptation, the bullying I experienced affects me negatively to this day. Both of these are true. What's more, I've talked to some of my childhood bullies now that we're 30+ years away from the incidents, and I've enjoyed getting their perspective on these things. It also helps, weirdly, that some of them have apologized.

So, that's my perspective, and I feel it's a complete perspective because it involves everyone who was actually involved, and it processes the emotions we all feel for this. I feel that in a lot of ways I've been able to process the situation I was in, and I've also been able to help others process their involvement, by hearing their apologies in most cases, and also forgiving. I mean, that isn't what I set out to do, but it's a healing process and for me it works.

This documentary doesn't do that. For some reason, it sticks strictly to the perspective of the bullies, interviewing them at various points, and so along with the documentarian, we get the perspective of the classmates involved in a vicious bullying incident to which most of them were involved.

The documentarian decided to pass on including the bullied kid. His reasoning was shallow at best -- he seems not to have wanted to portray the victim of bullying as having been able to get past his experiences and to become successful. There are so many things wrong with that approach, but the first is that the documentarian is seeking to portray a preferred reality rather than the reality as it exists outside of his head -- that reality being his preference not to "minimize" his bullying by showing a person who came out of it able to function and function well. Like it or not, that IS the reality in this case, and it shouldn't be dodged.

The second reason is related to the first, in that, by excluding the victim for that reason, he has missed possibly seeing the intricacies that go beyond simply how successful the man was in life. Being someone who is also successful in life, I can tell you that doesn't mean that the feelings were not necessary to process, and the contact with past bullies has helped me in ways even I didn't expect. That would have been the way to approach this -- but the documentarian took the easy way out. Imagine going all the way to Florida to visit the elderly teacher to discuss the incident in question, an incident she doesn't even remember, but not including the victim of the bullying. It's just a weird step to take, and the reasoning used simply sounds, feels, and tastes like a copout.

I spend most of my time watching documentaries. It's really one of the few types of television I watch. I've noticed that documentaries more and more attempt to portray from facts to a desired conclusion rather than present the facts for a clear conclusion, and editing is the chief tool in making this happen. So I realize this is technically what most documentaries have become, but I think there's a fine line somewhere that this one crossed that others have not. It crossed from documentary into docudrama without actually saying so, and the documentarian crossed from documentarian to the broader category of filmmaker, or even entertainer. Unfortunately, I cannot really recommend the result.

What a shallow, narcissistic, self-absolving exploitation of a childhood victim's trauma, replete with re-victimization and bad mouthing.

The fact that it "earned" an Oscar nom should confirm everything you must already think about The Academy, and is entirely congruent with the Wil Smith standing ovation.