Commentary on ‘Our Hero, Balthazar’
Content Warnings: high level gun violence and general violent themes
Content Warnings: high level gun violence and general violent themes
Going into the film ‘Our Hero, Balthazar’, I was unsure what to expect from a film claiming to be about absurd extremes of digital-age masculinity, self-validation, and the ‘Columbine’ generation. I was unsettlingly surprised.
The title character Balthazar, known as Balthy, is an extreme depiction of wealthy and privileged online figures that play up the experience of empathy online. The film starts with Manhattan born Balthy crying into a ring-light lit iPhone, comically indicative of the TikTok influencer setup. The intense emotion pouring out of him suddenly stops once the camera is clicked off.
We learn throughout the film that he uses this empathy to curate and manipulate his entire online and offline world. He latches onto this method to make a girl like him. Once he learns that she is an activist that has been spreading awareness about school shootings and gun violence in the US, he shoots a crying video about the most recent school shooting in Arkansas. As we quickly learn, Balthy’s chronically onlineness only alienates and disturbs her.
Most videos revolve around him crying. This is while repeating phrases other TikTok videos have said, about recent school shootings or other tragedies. His crying is a theme throughout the film, most consequently while pretending that his Life Coach has sexually assaulted him. This depiction of a caricature that has weaponised his tears and emotion, particularly as a white, wealthy young man, was a welcoming and highly reflective interpretation of online culture.
Balthy’s morbid and self-serving obsession with school shootings is confirmed when a provocative troll comments on one of his crying videos. That convinces Balthy that he is a school shooter. This troll is Soloman, a Texas convenience store worker that lives in a trailer park with his elderly Grandmother. Solomon has just been fired from his job for inappropriate behaviour towards a female staff member, and has begun selling his motivational speaker father’s pseudoscientific powdery testosterone supplement called ‘thRush’.
He is a rightly disgruntled young man, who has developed an angsty fascination with firearms, and fantasies about blowing up his peers like the Arkansas shooter.
After Balthy flies to Texas to meet Soloman, they play out a poor attempt at convincing each other that they are being sincere. Balthy doesn't want Solomon to be alike to the Arkansas shooter, so in a poor attempt to convince Solomon he flies to Texas to meet him. They are both pretending to not be aware of the fact that Solomon won't carry out the school shooting, if he is convinced well enough.
The back and forth was rightfully uncomfortable to watch as a viewer, this was someone maybe pretending to be a school shooter and someone pretending to help them, but only for a morbid self serving fantasy. They desperately wanted a friend but they truly didn't think that their true personality was enough. They had to fit into the mold they created when first messaging each other. The film continues to bring up and create new pockets of Soloman and Balthy’s lives that juxtapose with the image they have created online. Without giving away spoilers, the intense instability of their personalities is truly understood at the culmination of the film.
As someone that has had extensive experience in online spaces throughout my life, this is not a confronting reality. This overwhelming level of satire may be confronting to some viewers, but it is a stark and deeply nuanced look at how masculinity is played out online and the perils of living for the algorithm.
Is Balthy a hero?
Is Solomon a murderer or just the product of his environment?
Or are they the inevitable casualties of an epidemic of chronically online edgelords that use the internet as a pervasive and subversive bit?