Goodbye, relativism! Hello, cool-headed contextualization.

Rating: Null/10 (11 June 1999)

*American History X* is rare among contemporary movies in that it displays an unbending sense of good and evil. Both exist and are clearly identifiable. The movie makes sure that we always know whether a particular action or speech works in the service of good or evil. There is no equivocation.
However, *American History X* also does a superb job contextualizing actions. As a result, we are able to sympathize with a Neo-Nazi at the same time we despise everything s/he believes in and fights for. We are led to see actions, rather than people, as repositories of evil. And of good.
This movie emphatically promotes the idea that even the worst person can be redeemed, though always at a cost. As such, it is as much a religious as a socio-political movie.
Perhaps to underline the social urgency of taking action against evils such as racism, *American History X* dramatically shows how time is of the essence, what can go wrong if action is delayed. To succeed against evil, good must make its move quickly. The longer we wait to put evil back in its box, the greater the cost will be to us individually and to our society.
While this is a highly ideological movie, it is superbly envisioned and acted as a piece of entertainment and art. The ideas flow freely in the form of well constructed narrative action.
Most of the action unfolds as a Neo-Nazi student makes multiple attempts, some abortive, to come to grips with a customized writing assignment given him by his high-school principal. The assignment: to analyze and evaluate the events and situations which propelled the student's older brother into the Neo-Nazi movement. This tactic allows us to wander around a maze and torrent of family history. But fortunately the narrative shoots in at us from another direction occasionally, filling in contexts even more.
If you only rent one video this month, see this one. It is challenging, stirring, frightening, and philosophical all at once.