Something's wrong with Brandon. When a student comes to school and leaves behind a trail of blood, bullets, tears and panic, the questions are inevitable - who is he? how old is he? how old was he? how he was? how he studied? what he loved? whom he respected? who he hated? what is his family situation? how he was with the opposite sex? whether he was seen by a psychiatrist? what his last Facebook post about? where he got his gun? how long he planned it? and so on. This series of questions after the school shooting is dominated by “he” – a mysterious shooter who will soon become so popular that he will be envied by many actors and other creative personalities who have worked for decades to gain public attention, while interest in victims, if any, is usually in the context of a connection with the shooter, since their personal relationship could shed light on some pressing issues, but most often it turns out that there was no personal vendetta and the dead barely knew the shooter, which may help to understand that such crimes are caused by hatred for much more than an individual. But sometimes it happens that the shooter comes to school not because she personifies all the evils of this world for him, just there it is easiest to catch off guard the only victim with whom the future criminal had much to do - on November 13, 2008, fifteen-year-old Amanda Collet was unconscious in a Florida educational institution, which, as it turned out later, was wounded by her ex-girlfriend, who admitted that Amanda was interesting to her not only in a friendly way, and was rejected. For months, a similar situation occurred in a California school, only fourteen-year-old Brendon McInerney took up arms not because of rejection, but because he was elected, and on the eve of Valentine's Day received a sign of attention from a man who was known throughout the school. The problem was that this man was fifteen-year-old Larry King, who had gained far from positive popularity after he began coming to school wearing makeup and heels. Actress Martha Cunningham, along with the film crew, visited a small town in California to find out what led to the tragic events of February 12, 2008, when McInerney shot Larry King in the middle of class, in front of all classmates and a teacher.
After the Columbine tragedy, wooden crosses were erected in memory of the victims, but this seemingly noble cause caused a lot of controversy among the local population, because the crosses were put not eleven, but thirteen, and the person who installed them included in the number of victims of the shooters themselves. In his debut film, Cunningham does the same thing that this carpenter did once in Littleton, and very rarely does both journalists and filmmakers, namely give the same space in the picture to both boys, talking about their lives, problems and dreams as if they were on an equal footing, which is not far from the truth if we consider this story far beyond what happened on Valentine's Eve in 2008. “One boy is dead. Another is in jail. The system has failed everyone, reads the film’s tagline, which becomes clear in the first minutes of viewing, when the viewer begins to find out how strikingly similar the life paths of Larry and Brandon, and that the social problems that led to Brandon in prison are the same problems that Larry suffered in his short life as a transsexual. Both of them never knew what it was like to have a normal, healthy, strong and loving family - Larry lived in foster families, in which he was treated like a punching bag, then in shelters and group homes, Brandon had parents, but such that you will not think, it would be better for him not to have them at all, because drugs, violence and indifference were quite common in his house. Unable to find themselves in the family, the boys tried to adjust their lives in other ways, and Larry found happiness by determining who he was, and Brandon felt belonging, carried away by Nazi ideology. And as pathetic as the arguments of those who decided to save McInerney from life imprisonment may sound, they still make sense, and, despite the abominable nature of his crime, Martha Cunningham found the courage to treat him humanly, and to see in him an insecure child who could not do what he did if he had positive references and his needs were paid attention. King's weapon was love, and the filmmakers went to great lengths to love the man who took that precious life.
“Valentine’s Road” does not offer intricate forms, unique revelations, hard-to-reach materials or remarkable intrigue, but, like any truly high-quality documentary, tells not just a single story, but captures the global problem that American schools have been facing for years, and the Russians are just beginning – advanced children, understand that the modern world finally begins to come to the conclusion that it is normal to be gay, and come out, the consequences of which have teachers who were brought up with a firm conviction that people of non-traditional sexual orientation or death do not exist at all, or they are silently relieved. With the problems that arise from a lack of information about people like Larry and a lack of progressive and positive thinking about LGBT people, those seemingly successful and self-confident but actually lost children like Brandon who are full of frustration and anger for having to deal with too many unacceptable things at an early age, and when they lose the last thread, the respect of “friends”, this rage can no longer stay inside and out. The people who fought to prevent fourteen-year-old Brendon from spending his entire life in prison were not always motivated by good motives, but they did a small miracle in the American judicial system, and it now depends on McInerney and his entourage, which will either help him understand what he did and why, or will nurture and cherish, and then in two decades another prisoner will come out on the streets with only hatred for those who are different from him.