White Rage

This is a beautifully made biopic documentary made by a psychologist about about Finland's two first shocking school shooting in 2007 at Jokela High School.

We follow the 14 year old until he becomes a killer at 16. It's "Lauri" telling the story from start to finish, on how he as an quiet A-student was experiencing bullying getting worse and worse, and how he started planning his revenge after reading philosophy. He tells how he detaches himself when bullied, and that he started preparing with weapons, when he was attacked, after a long time not answering any of the violence for years.

Another older school shooter at Kauhajoki is focused upon. A bullied boy getting over it. After he took up volleyball, he learned team play, and he had a great time and became a part of a successful team, but the coach, who really saw him, told him that he shouldn't endure the bullying. for a long time, volleyball was his savior, and he stops thinking about revenge.

But the problem came back when he became the loner and the teacher's favorite student. He became alienated, and was succumbed to rumors about sexual harassment and for exams cheating. Though cleared for both, this stuck to him. And then he shot eleven at Kauhajoki.

Then the film really starts explaining the pattern.

The film explains black rage as being so angry that you are almost loose of control and white rage as rage being built op over years. White rage is calm and collected, and is not psychological excepted, the film states. These killers are calm, friendly and with control.

The film explains "stigma". Why changing schools doesn't help. Then the film really starts explaining the pattern.

We also goes abroad, to Germany, the states and the Utøya massacre in Norway, explaining that Breivik was sane, while shooting 69 kids at Utøya. They are all victims of childhood trauma and bullying.

The film definitely is well made. The cinematography is weirdly beautiful, and the history-teller is very calm.

White Rage is a film that really stays at you even after watching., I have never felt a film so explanatory about school shootings psychology. It's a documentary everybody would learn something from. See it!

A great documentary about school bullying, its causes and consequences. The narrator tells his story from early childhood, through adolescence to adulthood. As he is telling us his story, we get news clips from school shootings, and from other terrorist acts.

The narrator is himself a researcher on this topic as well as having personal experience as a former victim of school bullying. He offers explanations of these horrific acts, both from an academic view and from his personal experiences. He is both close to, and has a distance to the subject. I think that this is a what makes the documentary so great. The personal story of the narrator is engaging and it makes me empathize with him rather than judge him, even though he is starting to walk down a very dark path.

The academic view makes connections between his story and other stories possible, which makes me understand that there may be some common factors behind these acts that in the first glance seem unexplainable. The theory offered, of black and white rage, is easy to grasp. The narrator voice is calm and easy to follow. I like that the story is not told to fast. It is a heavy subject, and the slow pace offers time to digest what has been told.

I actually got to see this film before it came out, so I wrote my review on 16th of November.

he documentary used the story of "Lauri" as a structure for the documentary. He was an excellent example, an excellent main character for this documentary. And if I understood right, the real life counterpart of "Lauri" created the theory of white rage and black rage. Black rage is when you get so angry that you are almost out of control. White rage has been built over the years, like when a person has experienced a lot of physical or mental violence. The person suffering from white rage is calm and collected.

The documentary uses examples that probably might feel extremely distant to foreign viewers. The examples include school shootings that happened in Finland. There are examples from elsewhere too, for instance a school massacre from the US, terrorist groups (very briefly) and 2011 Norway attacks.

The story of "Lauri" and the examples made it sure that the documentary is very distressing and agonizing. But all the bad feelings just made sure that the documentary is extremely effective.

The film definitely is well made. The cinematography is weirdly beautiful, which makes the whole thing even more eerier. The music has the same kind of effect.

Valkoinen Raivo really made me think about the subject. It's an excellent documentary, and I think everybody who can watch it should.