MUBI

Teachers may be the saddest of all watching American History X. At the start a troubled teen is sent to the principal’s office. Responding to an assigned essay on civil rights struggles, he submits a report on Mein Kampf. His teachers have given up on him but the principal, a fair-minded and compassionate African-American man (Avery Brooks), knows his family’s troubled past and offers him a second chance. The principal does what any good instructor would do and assigns the student to write about himself and his family, charting his brother Derek’s immersion into a neo-Nazi gang and his ultimate imprisonment for a brutal hate crime.
As any urban teacher can attest, civil rights can be very hard to teach in areas as problematic as Los Angeles was in the 90s. The Rodney King incident simply took off the cap to tensions that had been boiling for a while. The riots created a racial tension that made it easy for hatred of the “others” to breed.
Perhaps the best thing about American History X is that it is not very optimistic about a solution. Embracing optimism discourages audiences from acknowledging the very real problems that affect that Vinyard family of Venice Beach. After the death of his father, a firefighter killed while extinguishing a fire in a Black neighborhood, Derek (Edward Norton) finds himself drawn into a culture of retaliation.
Danny (Edward Furlong), his younger brother, feels the need to defend his Derek and one way of doing so is imitating his brother. He likes to instigate racially charged fights and looks for trouble. Furlong is pretty good as the lost teen, reminiscent of a young Ewan McGregor.
The flashbacks chronicling the events that led to Derek’s incarceration are shot in black and white and, indeed, that is how Danny currently sees the world. But the tragedies in American History X cannot be explained in terms of good versus evil. Director Tony Kaye paints a complex picture of racial violence. A lesser movie would have made the Blacks passive saints. But American History X is honest about the trials to achieving tolerance in places like Los Angeles.
Even Derek’s transformation into the recruiter of a white supremacist movement cannot be dismissed as a reckless action in the heat of the moment after his father’s death. Observe the way he talks to a reporter soon after. It’s as if he has been nurturing these thoughts for some time. He also seems to be recycling the words of others, suggesting that his father’s murder was not the root of his anger.
Movies have been timid in their approach to race relations but American History X may be one of the most courageously provocative yet. It takes us into the scary depths of a subculture that many don’t know about or refuse to acknowledge. Few movies are this brave anymore and perhaps the most alarming moments for many will be the vile sentiments encourage out of Danny’s mouth by the skinhead thugs. The sad reality is that in the world of neo-Nazism, hatred is that overt. This poisonous rhetoric leads to a very disturbing scene in which Derek’s gang attacks a grocery owned by Koreans.
American History X main concern is how such violence affects kids. Children imitate what they see and in a revealing flashback we discover that Derek’s father, who has up to now been built as a saintly figure, was himself the root of the problem, installing anger in his son. Importantly, the scene also indicates that Derek was a weak person, agreeing submissively with his father rather than contesting him.
This was Edward Norton’s only Oscar nomination and it remains one of his most enigmatic performances. After the death of his father, Derek looks for father figures and finds one in the worst possible person. He is seduced by the ranting of Cameron (Stacy Keach), the leader of a growing neo-Nazi gang. Danny, in turn, finds a false paternal figure in Derek and then in Cameron. Sweeney, the influential principal, seems to be the only effective positive force in their lives. Notice, the kid who Danny quarrels with at school is at the same position Danny was at the beginning. He too was being groomed by his older brother for vengeance. This makes the movie a scathing indictment of an endless cycle of violence. Any kind of happy ending in this movie would have been unsatisfactory.
It takes a lot for Derek to reform, but his time in prison forces him to reevaluate his life. Even then he doesn’t completely let go of his old friends right away. His reform is easier to believe when we realize that Derek owes his life to his Black prison mate. He walks out of jail not only reformed but also finally with something to be proud of: his family.
American History X is the kind of social cinema we need because it accomplishes what so very few movies of its ambitions only aspire to. It forces discussion and consideration of America’s social problems and paints a horrifying picture of the consequences that happen when they are left ignored.
A disturbing caveat to American History X is, ironically, its fanbase, which consists of a high number of skinheads and white supremacists. This is always a risk when making a film like American History X that goes inside a subculture. Predictably, flattered skinheads who recognize themselves will miss the point. Tellingly, however, they have had little to say about Derek’s reform and his disowning of his past life.

English music video and commercial director Tony Kaye made his feature debut with this controversial drama about race-hatred in the U.S. which was taken off his hands and re-edited by its star who won an Academy Award nomination for his efforts.

White supremacist Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) spends three years in prison for the racially motivated murder of two black gang-banger and emerges a changed man only to discover his younger brother Danny (Edward Furlong) heading down the same path.

An up-and-coming Edward Norton (“The People vs. Larry Flynt” & “Everyone Says I Love You”) pilled on 30 pounds of muscle to beef up his body and, with the assistance of Jerry Greenbert, commandeered the editing suite to beef up his part for his second Oscar nomination.

Fellow up-and-comer Edward Furlong proves a capable match with a Young Artist Award nominated performance at the head of an underused supporting cast which includes throw-away performances Beverly D’Angelo, Avery Brooks, Stacy Keach, Fairuza Balk, Ethan Suplee and Elliott Gould.

The freshman filmmaker bring a strong visual style to the black-and-white story with the black-and-white flashback footage which adds a menacing edge to the seemingly sublime settings of the Venice Beach superb of L.A. and one can only lament the loss of the directorial vision.

It is ultimately however the somewhat simplistic story which severely lets down the production as it contents itself stock shocks and an entirely unconvincing reconciliation in the long drawn-out lead-up to a sublimely uninspired ending replete with a quotation from Abraham Lincoln.

“You better watch your ass, ‘cause in the joint, you the nigger, not me.”