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American History X
***
Cinema
Releases - March 26, 1999
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by Tony Kaye. Written by David McKenna. Starring Edward
Norton, Edward Furlong, Avery Brooks, Beverly D'Angelo, Guy Torry, Stacy
Keach, Jennifer Lien, Ethan Suplee, Fairuza Balk, Elliott
Gould.
"American History X" gets a marginal
recommendation, and it's disappointing to have to say 'marginal'. The first
ninety minutes build up as powerful and complex, even masterful, and only
the last thirty are silly, simplistic and muddled.
The film is a drama about two young brothers who
are drawn into the world of white supremacist gangs. In the "present day"
of the film, the younger sibling, Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong), is in trouble
at school, for writing a paper praising Hitler's "Mein Kampf". The headmaster,
a black man named Sweeney (Avery Brooks), still holds out hope for the kid,
and orders him to write a more soul-searching paper, about the effect of
his older brother Derek on his life.
Derek (Edward Norton), meanwhile, is getting used
to freedom after a three-year stretch in prison, and making plans for his
family to move away from the hovel they're living in, the squalor of which
is not helping the health of mother Doris (Beverly D'Angelo). The fact that
Danny's skinhead chums still hang around the house is not helping anything
either, since Derek is a reformed character, and despises the adulation he
and his brother get from these fanatics.
In black-and-white chapters revisiting the past,
we are shown how Derek, whose fireman father was murdered by black junkies,
fell into racism, how he lived as a skinhead and how, in prison, he eventually
matured, and grew out of bigotry. That incarceration was for the killing
of some black youths he had a local feud with -- a killing so brutal that
the shock made my whole body convulse. Derek is, indeed, at times such a
shocking and repulsive character that the very look in his eyes is one of
terrifying hatred that viewers will remember for years, whenever the title
"American History X" is mentioned.
What is most frightening about the man, who has
"White Power" tattooed on his shoulder and a swastika over his heart, is
his intelligence. Derek is not an empty-minded redneck, searching for something
to hate, but has a large knowledge base, and quite a few examples of how
minority groups, or certain members of them, have had detrimental effects
on society.
There's obviously twisted logic at work in this
guy's mind -- even when he has a good argument, Derek never has good reason
for unconditional hatred of all non-whites to be his conclusion. His paradoxical,
frustrated hypocrisy is perhaps best shown by the fact that he purports to
look up to Hitler -- but while most of his targets are similar, he thinks
in a totally different way to Herr Führer. Whenever somebody tries to
point any of this out, or give white counter-examples to the laments about
ethnic corruption, he interrupts them by screaming a repeat of his argument,
or a personal insult. The rhetoric is therefore effective, because nobody
gets to offer any to the contrary.
Norton plays his character brilliantly, throughout
all the stages we get to witness. He is interesting as a frustrated young
kid, scary as a passionate fascist and dramatic as the conscientious adult.
The performance, as well as the filming and construction of the flashback
scenes, conveys things very successfully, and we get a good grasp of how
Derek's mind works. As he grows and changes, we can feel it happening, with
a sense of relief and satisfaction.
Unconvincing, however, are many of the scenes
set after Derek's release from prison, where he seems to be able to tie up
the loose ends and heal the wounds of several years in the space of one day.
Most ridiculous is the idea that Danny, who we're constantly being told has
followed in Derek's footsteps as a cogent, articulate orator for militant
racism, can be won round into flower-power pacifism after a quiet little
chat with big bettered bro. The whole denouement hinges on this change of
heart, and as if its expeditious nature wasn't foolish enough, we hardly
know the mechanics of Danny's mind anywhere near well enough for it to mean
anything. The prime opportunity to explore his thoughts comes when we see
him having to write Sweeney's assignment, but this never occurs to the film,
which uses it for unnecessary voice-over explanations of what's happening
on the screen, and when it happened, with very little opinion or
commentary.
Cinematographer Tony Kaye, who also directed the
movie, but was fired in post-production, creates some stunning camera angles
and images of icy horror. Oscar-winning editors Alan Heim and Jerry Greenberg
put together a lot of individual scenes with an affecting visceral flow and
intensity. All the actors work hard to give first-rate performances, even
those who play sloppily-drawn characters.
In conception and talent, then, "American History
X" clearly had the potential to be a great film, even an important document
about the nature of good and evil. But despite all the quality here, the
taste I'm left with is a bitter one, because so many things simply don't
add up. The character of Cameron (Stacy Keach), kingpin of the neo-Nazi factions
shown in the film, has a rather innocuous presence, and certainly does not
live up to his intimidating reputation. A subplot involving some black kids
with a vendetta against Danny doesn't work either -- being not a consequence
of the Vinyard brothers' racism, or a clear enough parallel to the misery
that's been caused by the whites -- it's insignificant to the didactic themes,
and exists only as tacked-on motivation for a cheap final shock to the
system.
More important, of course, is the aforementioned
problem of Danny's lightning-speed conversion, which allows a cloud of ghastly
hollowness and confusion to hang over everything that follows. Struggling
to find a point in its finale, "American History X" wraps up with a Martin
Luther King quote, hoping that the great man's words of wisdom will fill
in the movie's plot holes. They don't, and I myself have a quote as summary:
"Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to
better."
Think about it.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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