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It’s a question that can’t be settled here, yet deserves continual debate: how extreme can a movie be in depicting a violent subject before its message is compromised by the violence?
American History X, which earned Edward Norton a Best Actor Academy Award nomination this year, is an often overpoweringly brutal film dealing with generational racism. As Derek Vinyard, a volatile skinhead who is also a gifted speaker and organizer, Norton transforms himself into a muscular, swastika-tattooed bundle of incongruities. When Derek goes to prison for killing two black men who break into his car, he becomes a messiah to the racist skins, especially his younger brother Danny (Edward Furlong). But upon release three years later, Derek’s chief concern is undoing the multigenerational disaffection handed down from his father before it destroys Danny as well.
A powerful feature bow from activist commercial and documentary director Tony Kay, American History X is set in present day color, but unfolds its narrative, and its characters’ evolution, mostly in black and white flashbacks. Derek’s initial conversion after his father’s death, his efforts to keep his family together, his manipulation by an older white supremacist guru (Stacy Keach), and his eventual enlightenment in prison paint him as a three-dimensional, sometimes even sympathetic character for whom there is no simple detour around tragedy. But some of the scenes, particularly Derek’s crime, and to a lesser extent his rape by supposed compatriots in prison, are presented in such excruciating detail that they risk -- for me, anyway -- diluting the film’s messages.
And overpowering the filmmakers’ talents. Opening and closing with a peaceful seascape at Venice Beach, using gorgeous visuals and stirring choral music to contrast the ugliness within the neighborhood (almost like Terence Malick’s use of scenery amid combat in The Thin Red Line), Kay has a definite gift with the lens. And the interestingly diverse cast, which also includes Avery Brooks as the principal whose impromptu lessons with Danny lend the film its title, Fairuza Balk as Derek’s Hitlerian girlfriend, and Beverly D’Angelo as his mother, get the most from a script (by debut writer David McKenna) whose turns occasionally strain credulity (Mrs. Vinyard winds up dating Danny’s jewish guidance counselor, played by Elliot Gould; and Derek seems to make a black friend in prison rather quickly). It would be a shame if the total impact of such important subject matter, depicted in a generally reflective manner, were lessened to those who could easily find its images overpowering. B-
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