A Searing Blow to the Face, A Cultural Cornerstone

Rating: 10/10 (2 February 2005)

"American History X" is one of the most graphic, brutally honest, harrowing, and challenging films you'll ever get to experience. Period. Featuring Edward Norton as a reformed Neo-Nazi, immersed into an endless cycle of hate and just released from prison with a dire awakening for tolerance, this is a study that doesn't question its subjects' animosities and hostilities as much as it delves into their world, consumed by social depravity and intolerance towards all, endeavoring wherever and whenever they might simply to promote white supremacy across America. The narrative is Derek Vinyard (Norton)'s younger brother Danny (Edward Furlong), who is assigned, nay, obligated, to write a paper detailing his influence Derek's path to social degradation so that he might better understand how to grip with his embedded anger and perhaps relinquish it. There's nothing pretty about this harrowing and powerful story, yet it demands to be hearkened: it's brutal and incendiary, taking us deep inside a culture of hate, and having us understand the roots of the subjects' animosities. It's timeless and timely, unequivocal and unflinching, and it is about as uncompromising as a series of dour blows to the face, and then some. Watching this incredibly potent and brutally honest study of the roots, repercussions, and reformations of a culture of hate is a transformation of reckoning: its tone is dark (manifested in black and white cinematography), and whatever message that is trying to be conveyed, it is sincere, yet not entirely hopeful. Edward Norton is astoundingly human, in encompassing the chastity, and evoking the chilling menace of deep-seated abomination. This is one of the most powerful human studies I have ever endured: it is intent on tackling the most consuming quality of man in examining its sources and its brutal extent of barbarity and inhumanity, even showing us that hate and prejudice is so powerful it can collapse even the dearest relations. The plot is structured scatalogically rather than chronologically, so that multiple themes can be examined at once, never settling for the here and now, but rather than the then and now to advance its themes and an understanding of its subjects' plighted deviances. In conclusion, one can hardly excoriate "Histoy" for exonerating Derek, Danny, and their Neo-Nazi cults, but rather, the film barrages the culture of hate, wherever and however it exists, because in the end, it squanders even the brightest potentials (e.g. Derek) and makes enemies of us all. The ending is exceedingly disturbing for me, as it virtually contradicts some critical and seemingly discernible themes developed throughout the film, of acceptance and tolerance through brutal reformation. Perhaps the message that Kaye is trying to elicit is that the cycle of hate perpetuates throughout cultures, and consumes and ultimately destroys its subjects. "American History X" is a contemporary cornerstone for cultures everywhere, that will only re assuredly resonate through time. **** out of ****