Better Days Review: Collective Intimidation and the Domino Effect of Bullying

“Better Days” (2019) is a film adaptation of the novel by Jiu Yue Xie, entitled “In His Youth, In Her Beauty” (2016). The film directed by Derek Tsang, which was delayed due to showing the reality of the brutal depiction of bullying in schools, was finally able to be released on October 25, 2019 in China.

The Asian film, which was nominated for an Oscar 2021 for the Best International Feature Film category , also attracted controversy for bringing sharp criticism to “Gaokao”, China's national university entrance examination system which is burdensome and demanding for high school students.

Starring a couple of artists with a fairly large age gap, the appearance of Zhou Dongyu and Jackson Yee is actually able to present a tragic romance for the younger generation that sustains life from false hopes.

“Better Days” opens with an allegorical flash forward featuring an adult Chen Nian (Zhou Dongyu) who is teaching his students tenses in English about “This used to be our playground” and “This was our playground”, both of which mean it's past. , but the difference is the word "use to be" suppresses the sense of loss.

The allegory is then repelled to Che Nian's nostalgia in 2011, about flashbacks with his girlfriend Xiao Bei (Jackson Yee) that bring about a sense of loss and the worst days when Chen Nian goes through the period leading up to his college entrance exam, called Gaokao.

With Xiao Bei's help, Chen Nian finally managed to rise up against the world of systemic oppression by his friends at school, pervasive violence, and collective apathy from all walks of life.

However, Chen Nian's success in completing the exam had to be paid for with something even more precious, which was Xiao Bei. The story of the two then proceeds to become more complicated and becomes the irony of life, from being a victim of intimidation to being involved in a murder mystery.

In the first act of this film, the focus of the main conflict focuses on the story of bullying that occurred in high school. Chen Nian, who is a quiet student, appears and becomes the spotlight of the entire school when his classmate becomes a victim of bullying and decides to end his life by jumping from the school building.

Among other friends who were busy taking pictures of the victim, Chen Nian brought sympathy and ventured to cover the victim's body with the jacket he was wearing, this eventually brought Chen Nian's name to the surface and made him the next target of bullying.

“Better Days” had problems and drew criticism for being too brave to portray the dark side of school bullying so tragically, not to mention criticism of the high-pressure exam-oriented education system which is linked to the origins of bullying in the educational sphere.

The complexity of the problems presented in “Better Days” basically stems from cases of bullying that occur in schools. There is a scene that has a big role so that the view of the complexity of this bullying case is very difficult to solve from upstream to downstream.

Cases of intimidation cannot be advanced in complaint offenses easily, they must meet the requirements of the existence of concrete evidence which in many cases is difficult to obtain. The Ministry of Education can't do much by intervening in cases like this, the parties concerned consider bullying cases more normal in schools.

In this film, the school also cannot take full responsibility, when cases of bullying and bullying are reported, the principal will pass the responsibility on to the homeroom teacher, then the teacher will blame the parents, and parents throw this wild ball at the social system that enforces clocks. unnatural work so that they can not supervise the children because they are busy making money.

This domino effect then continued on the perpetrators and victims, Chen Nian who was initially the victim of bullying, for one reason or another, fate turned him into someone who had to bear a big sin because of his anger at someone who continued to intimidate him.

When viewed from the acting quality of the actors, it's no wonder that "Better Days" was able to win an Oscar nomination as well as won many other awards such as Best New Performer for Jackson Yee at the 39th Hong Kong Film Awards and Best Actress for Zhou Dongyu at the 35th Hundred Flower Award, both looks stunning displaying the romance between Chen Nian and Xiao Bei just by looking at each other.

The Chinese box office film with a gross income of over 225 million US dollars received a fairly large rating from the audience. Reported on the IMDb page "Better Days" received a rating of 7.5/10 out of 9,306 ratings. Meanwhile, on the Rotten Tomatoes page, this film received a score of 97 percent from the tomatoometer and audience ratings.