Poor man’s Do The Right Thing: while American History X is definitely more shocking, I felt that Do The Right Thing does a better job of showing the motivations of the characters, even though I really don’t like Do The Right Thing.
★★★☆☆
American History X has been on my radar for a long, long time. I wanted to watch it in high school, but it’s not exactly a movie one can use to mack on a Friday night. Try to picture it: Two teens, cuddled on a couch, while a bald Edward Norton covered in white power tattoos curb-stomps a guy to death. Ahhh… young love. I wanted to watch it in college, but a heavy movie like this has rare occasions to fit easily into conversation. So here it is, 2015, and Josh is assigning me this movie. A movie that I have heard references to and wanted to watch for 10 years. It’s a recipe for unrealistically high expectations.
1998’s American History X stars Edward Norton as a skinhead. It also featuring Beverly D’Angelo as a non-Griswold mother, Edward Furlong as Northon’s skinhead-in-training brother, Ethan Suplee as my favorite racist from any movie (he’s so lovably goofy! like a murderous, bigoted Chris Farley), and finally Elliot Gould and Avery Brooks round out the cast as two high school teachers. The film’s plot is told somewhat out of order, with flashbacks taking up at least 50% of the runtime. The actual present day plot occurs over the two days in which Edward Norton is released from prison and his attempts to separate himself and his family from the skinheads who he was associated with. The flashback serve to fill the audience in on why he went to prison and what his time in prison was like. At its core, the film is a redemption tale for Norton, and there are many things that the film does well. But there are some major story problems that didn’t allow this film to reach its full potential.
First the good: Edward Norton is a really good actor. Like, really fucking good. I think I’d watch 2 hours of him staring silently into the camera. No matter who he’s portraying, he acts his balls off. This movie is no exception. I also really enjoyed the presentation of flashback sequences. The heightened score and black and white film really made it feel like a memory. This really helped us understand the characters a little better because I felt we were getting to see the events how the characters viewed them, not necessarily exactly how they occurred.
Personally, I feel the cinematography is the best thing about this film. About a third of the way through the movie there is a scene where the score, cinematography, story, and acting all work together beautifully, and it’s something to behold. In one of the flashback sequences, skinheads are playing basketball against some Crips. The skinheads are losing, so Edward Norton joins the game, with the stakes being the right to control the basketball court. Long story short, the skinheads win and the Crips are forced to leave. The thrilling victory is shot like something out of Hoosiers or Remember the Titans: the music is uplifting, everyone circles the victors as the cheer and jump up and down, and it’s really, really hard not to find yourself cheering for the skinheads. Then you realize that they’re horrible people and you feel bad about yourself.
Now the bad: The film relies heavily on water and slow motion together as symbolism. I will admit that the visuals are quite beautiful. The water droplets slowly falling through the air, watching Edward Norton’s facial expressions slowly change while you savor all the little emotions, it’s really quite fascinating. However, in the end, it feels a touch heavy-handed, and by the last emotion-tinged slow motion scene, the beauty has faded and you’re really hoping for it to just speed up. The director, Tony Kaye, doesn’t go full Zack Snyder on us, but it gets a little tiresome.
Finally, the ugly: The overall story and message felt like it really missed what it could’ve achieved here. The basketball scene above was something I really enjoyed because it showed the main characters as normal people, despite their misguided beliefs. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn’t really do this well: Instead of showing me how skinheads take youths who have low self-esteem and then slowly brainwash them into being skinheads, the films tells me about it in a throwaway conversation. The film concludes with a super preachy voiceover. Edward Norton decides not to be racist because he meets a friendly black guy in prison. Most of the Edward’s story feels predictable, despite some of the more shocking moments. Instead of getting to see Edward Norton’s drift into racism, I’m told that Norton’s dad was killed by a black person and that this same father was also a racist, driving Edward Norton to become a skinhead.
Throughout the film, there are several conversations between a bigoted person and a non-bigoted person. Usually, the bigoted person will make sweeping generalizations about how non-whites are lazy, stupid, aggressive etc. The scene revealing Norton’s father to be a racist opens with Norton as the non-bigot and his father as the bigot. However, the conversation begins at a point that might be considered reasonable. Norton’s father, a firefighter, is arguing that affirmative action is putting his life at risk since the fire station hired employees who were less qualified than other applicants because they were black. A discussion of merit inside the affirmative action system could be a debate worth having. However, the point is immediately rendered moot when Norton’s father begins spouting racial epithets! Now we have no reason to believe that anything the father said about the merit of the new hires is accurate; the dad is just a racist! I really was hoping that Norton’s father would reveal the middle-ground to racism that exists. There are many people in this world that aren’t members of the KKK, but still hold racist beliefs. Unfortunately, according to American History X, you’re either a bleeding heart liberal, or a cross burning skinhead.
Overall, this is not a bad movie. It’s visually really well-made, and Edward Norton is a fantastic actor. Some of the scenes are worth seeing, especially for their shock value. However, this film could have really hit the mark by conceding that racism is a complex socio-economic problem with a long history. Giving every racist a funny, hip black friend will not solve the problem, and having a parent being murdered by a person of a different race doesn’t automatically make you a skinhead. Most racism is more insidious, more hidden. It comes from suburban parents yelling about “inner-city youths” getting bussed into their children’s school, or people on Facebook coming up with reasons for why a young black man more or less deserved to die at the hands of police, or some neighborhood watch dude with a gun. It comes from girls clutching their purses on elevators with black dudes and guys dismissing claims of systemic prejudice with “The Irish had it hard too!” (thanks to Billy for this beautifully worded rant). However, this movie chooses only to acknowledge racism at its most obvious. I’d recommend American History X, but you don’t need to race out and see it. If you’re looking for a movie about racial tension, I’d personally check out Do The Right Thing or Boyz N The Hood. This one can wait.
American History X isn’t available for streaming. Go check out your local library?
Next week, Josh will be reviewing Risky Business. Both Josh and I agree that Tom Cruise is an excellent actor who is too attractive for his own good. Risky Business was one of his first forays onto the silver screen and is just a fun movie.
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