By WARREN DAY

After a winter of disappointing films, “Bully” is a powerful reminder of a time when motion pictures sought to not only entertain, but to move people to action by showing injustice in a way that touched both our hearts and heads. And while most films fade from memory in a day or two, “Bully” will linger in a positive way for a long time. In other words, you’ll be very glad you saw it.

The term “moving pictures” is not just about films themselves: it also speaks to what they’re supposed to do, because the core purpose of a film is to move us toward some reaction: to laugh, to be startled, to sit on the edge of our seats, to think, to hope, to dream. In the so-called Golden Age of Movies, those moving pictures elicited a wide range of emotions and responses, but nowadays the majority of Hollywood films seem only interested in going for laughs or thrills.

“Bully” is a non-fiction film that holds your interest from first frame to last. It isn’t a dry documentary at all, nor is it in the end a downer (so don’t stay away from it for that reason): rather. It’s an uplifting story of how some very ordinary people face some extraordinary circumstances.

This film tells the story of five young people, age 11 to 17. Four are from small towns (in Oklahoma, Georgia, and Mississippi), and one is from a small city in Iowa (population: 82,684). They all reside in what coast-dwellers like to call “fly-over country,” and none of them come from families with much money or what passes for sophistication.

What these five kids share in common is that they’re “different,” and because they’re different, they’re subject to vicious bullying at school. Like some of the adults in the film, you may remember a kind of “PG-rated” bullying from your school days. You may not be aware of how many kids today experience an “R-” or “X-rated” kind of cruelty; always emotionally and often physically abusive. In the last decade the problem has escalated: we now have three million kids a month missing school because they’re too scared to go, and with good reason.

For these children, the halls of school have become a minefield, where at any minute their heads could be pounded into a wall. Recess is not a welcome but dreaded time, because it means they’ll be standing alone at the edge of crowds that will never invite them in. At an age when they need the most acceptance, they’re experiencing the most rejection.

In one scene filmed on a school bus with a hidden camera, Alex—just 12 years old—is stabbed with a lead pencil twice, held in a choke hold, and punched several times, while the bus driver does nothing to stop it. This same scene was shown to a school administrator, who shockingly tells Alex’s parents that she’s ridden that bus many times and the kids are “lovely.”

Kelby, a 16 year old lesbian from Tuttle, Oklahoma (population: 6,019), was forced off the basketball and softball teams, and subjected to ridicule from teachers as well as classmates. Yet she still hopes that by living openly she can help change minds in her little town. During the school year covered in “Bully,” she goes into a new class where the students move away from where she’s sitting, leaving her isolated in a circle of empty desks.

Only two of these five kids might be gay, but all of them know that from their peers, the worst thing to be called is a “fag,” a word that’s hurled at them like a cannonball and intended to do just as much damage to their psyches. While some states have tried to pass anti-bullying laws, they have been opposed by the far right, who claim that not allowing their children to publicly dislike gays violates their freedom of religion.

Lee Hirsch, who photographed and directed “Bully,” doesn’t try to explain why kids can be so cruel—who can?—nor does he offer easy solutions. Instead he presents an up-close and personal view of a problem that’s sweeping the country. One commentator says it’s all part of our growing “culture of viciousness,” something you see reflected not only in the schoolyard, but also in popular video games, as well as political discourse, sports—consider those coaches who pay their players a bounty to maim other kids—and in our movies. The biggest boxoffice hit of the last four weeks, “The Hunger Games,” tells the story of 24 teenagers who are forced to hunt and kill each other.

As I said, this film is not a downer. It uplifts because of the courage and fortitude with which these kids and their parents respond.

The parents may not have the resources to understand what’s happening, but they do stand up for their children in every way they can. Kelby’s father looks and speaks in a way that might be called “redneck” by the vulgar or uninformed, but he supports his gay daughter completely and offers to quit his job and move the family to a city where she might be better accepted: it’s not often in a movie that you see such unconditional love toward a gay child.

Alex—the 12 year old who commits an act of bravery just by getting on the school bus each day—says at one point, “I don’t believe in luck anymore, but I do believe in hope.” You will, too, after seeing “Bully.”