American History X (1998)
Directed by Tony Kaye
Starring Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Beverly
D'Angelo, Avery Brooks, Stacy Keach, Fairuza Balk,
Jennifer Lien, Elliott Gould, Guy Torry, Ethan Suplee
This harsh, beautifully crafted film is actually upsetting to watch, it is so intense. Edward Norton is at his finest, in a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. It's quite simply the best movie I've seen in years.
Though it is the story of one man's redemption, it is hardly optimistic. Derek Vinyard (Norton) is just released from prison; a reformed neo-Nazi skinhead, he tries to stop his high school age brother Danny (Furlong) from following in his footsteps. To try to undo some of the damage he has done.
Derek's story is told in extensive flashbacks, his transformation from a studious middle class ‘good kid' to a racist ringleader. Traumatized by the shooting death of his firefighter father, which Derek is convinced was racially motivated, he turns his rage into ideology. What's truly frightening about Derek is that he's bright and articulate. He's not just another thug. The goons and losers in the Venice Beach fascist cell idolize him.
Neo-Nazi scum is made, not born. Poisoned by the killing of the father he idolized (who, it turns out, was prejudiced and not far from being a racist himself), pressured by the family's reduced circumstances in a deteriorating, crime-ridden neighborhood, Derek embraces an ideology of hate. He's helped down that road by the local mini-Hitler (played with slimy abandon by Stacy Keach). But people are not merely products of their environment. Derek's sister Davina (Jennifer Lien) lives in the same pressure-cooker household and has inherited the same violent temper; the difference is she refuses to transform her rage into an ideology.
As for young Danny, he's a kid who'd follow his big brother over a cliff. His essential sweetness and innocence stand in shocking contrast to his shaved head and white-supremacist tattooing.
The performances in this film are outstanding. Ethan Suplee, as a white supremacist hanger-on, is a crude and disgusting presence who contaminates the Vinyard's cramped apartment with his mere presence. Avery Brooks, as mentor to the reformed Derek, projects an unshakable dignity and uncompromising morality. Beverly D'Angelo is the sickly and exhausted mother who should have given up but cannot.
In a movie that includes brutal murders and prison rape, the most harrowing scene is a flashback to a dinner table discussion. The conversation turns to the case of Rodney King; included are Danny (still a skinhead) and his mother's boyfriend, a liberal Jewish teacher (Gould). Civilized discussion inevitably degenerates into argument and epithets. When Davina does not knuckle under to his chauvinistic verbal bullying, Derek resorts to physical bullying. Worked up into a fury, he throws the guest out of the house, shouting anti-Semitic insults; Davina returns and goes at him with a baseball bat. It's an ugly, horrible scene, acted with great intensity and conviction. These people are losing their humanity.
Shot largely in luminous, silvery black and white, the film's aesthetic beauty almost seems to mock the pain of its characters. As do the sunny Southern California locations. A city park basketball game, whites versus blacks, is presented as high irony; an epic battle fought for the basest of motives. Director Tony Kaye had his troubles on this project (he was eventually removed by the studio in the editing stage) but he sure knows his way around a camera.
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