Movie "Ondskan"

 

Ondskan (Evil) is a Swedish movie about a teenager called Erik Ponti who is abused by his stepfather. Because of this, he has a lot of repressed anger, sadness and frustration. But at school he is the one that bullies others and he channels his pain into violence getting into fights. After beating up a guy, he gets expelled from that high school. His mother, who is also abused by her husband and feels powerless against him, sends Erik to a boarding school hoping he gets away from the abuse at home and that he can continue studying without getting into fights.

When Erik arrives at his new school, he tries to control his violent tendencies and make his mother proud, however, at the boarding school there is a Student Council, a group of older students who hold significant power over their peers. They enforce strict control and subject disobedient students to physical and psychological punishment. The school knows this is happening, but they don’t do anything to stop it. They believe that students need to solve their problems on their own. So, when Erik discovers what is going on at the school and is bullied by the members of the Student Council, he has to decide between confronting them or trying to stop this cycle of violence that has always been present in his life.

I think one of the main points of the movie is how hard it is to break the cycle of violence and how you can be both a victim and a bully at the same time. In the movie you see how Erik is both of those things, but he tries to be better and learn from his past mistakes. In addition, at the boarding school there are a lot of students who are afraid of the Council members and they don’t agree with the violent actions, yet they are passive bystanders. They don’t do anything but with this silence they reinforce the cycle of bullying. They don’t fight against it because they feel powerless since the school doesn’t offer a safe space to speak up about these problems. Therefore, this movie also shows the important role schools have in order to prevent bullying and offer students a supportive environment. 

Finally, another thing that is well represented in the movie is the different roles in bullying like, for example, the victims (Erik and other students), bullies (the Student Council and Erik too in the past), the ringleader bully (the leader of the Student Council), the bully followers, the passive bystanders, etc.

Made by Diana Armeana Nicolaescu