Good character drama, lackluster social study

Rating: 7/10 (5 May 2015)

I remember watching this film in school when I was about 15 or so. Needless to say, it was an impactful experience. American History X is without a doubt an emotionally charged experience, but the way it's all handled is also ironically where I feel things go a bit wrong.
It's nighttime. Danny (Edward Furlong) is trying to sleep, but his older brother Derek (Edward Norton) having loud sex with his girlfriend is keeping him up. Suddenly, he notices a few black men trying to steal Derek's car. He alerts Derek who, armed with nothing but his boxers and a handgun, kills one of the men, shoots another one and tries to shoot at the remaining one driving away, but to no avail. Danny, seeing what his brother wrought, looks at Derek while he walks angrily toward the black man he wounded earlier. The film then cuts to the present, shot in color (as opposed to the B/W flashbacks), as Danny meets with the principal due to him writing a paper on Hitler's Mein Kampf. The principal (Avery Brooks), who also used to be Derek's teacher, tries to explain to Danny that it's Derek, now serving a prison sentence, who made him this way, but he doesn't get through to him. Instead, he gives him a new assignment: to write a paper on his brother. The film then crosscuts between flashbacks to how Derek became a neo-Nazi skinhead, how he got incarcerated, etc. and the present, showing Danny and Derek, who has changed his ways while in prison, trying to make it in their day-to-day lives.
It's to director Tony Kaye's credit that the film is the emotional journey it is. He makes extensive use of dramatic orchestral and choral music (courtesy of Anne Dudley), slow-motion and black-and-white photography to enhance the drama and he mostly succeeds. Also great are Norton and Furlong's performances who not only excel in their individual scenes, but exhibit a chemistry in their scenes together, a sense that these are indeed two brothers who've lived together.
I do have a few issues with the film however. It has an unhealthy tendency to give a lot of screen time to neo-Nazi ideology. We of course know that the filmmakers are not proponents of this ideology through the existence of characters like the benevolent principal Sweeney, the black inmate Lamont and the evil skinhead leader Cameron, the subplot of how Derek became a neo-Nazi (he was fueled more by anger than ideology and was subsequently easily manipulated by Cameron), the fact that principal Sweeney came to visit Derek in prison after Derek was raped by skinheads because he befriended Lamont and tells him that he cannot run away, thus ensuring the safety of his family, but that he has to stay with them and try to make amends. Make no mistake, the film doesn't in any way portray neo-Nazis as good, but the incessant focus on discussions with Derek spouting racist ideology are strange in that you realize the film actually seems to spend more time there than providing a balanced view and social context. I know it's an unfair comparison, but remember The Wire? That series spent countless hours (which a film doesn't have obviously) explaining the complex cyclical relationship between the police and criminals. It gave insight into the hopeless prospects of many poor blacks and showed how sometimes joining a gang is the only viable option. Despite the fact that American History X isn't fundamentally racist, it doesn't give us enough social context to get rid of that nagging feeling that things could've been more balanced.
Also relevant is that apparently the film's ending is an alternate one. Instead of hearing the dead Danny quote Lincoln's 1861 Inaugural Address, we would see Derek unable to deal with Danny's death and shaving his head, thus becoming a skinhead again. This would then tie the whole plot together and show how the film's really about 'the endless cycle of violence'. But, at least according to IMDb's trivia page, this was altered after Norton objected. I can see why as that would've been an even more hopeless ending, but I wonder if the original ending wouldn't have been better. As it is, we see Derek and Danny truly bonding after which Danny is shot by the same black boy he insulted earlier. The film thus ends with blacks being the aggressors which results in the white characters we've come to know and understand either being dead or emotionally traumatized. We can't really look at it from the boy's point of view either, because the film doesn't grant us context about his way of life, save for a shocked close-up of his face as he realizes what he's done. Again, like the film's excessive focus on racist ideology, this ending leaves a bad taste in one's mouth, despite Danny's quote about how 'hate is baggage', etc. At least Derek going skinhead again would have softened the racist angle and strengthened the 'cycle of violence' point of view.
All in all, it's hard to summarize my feelings toward American History X. I appreciate all the potent melodrama director Kaye and screenwriter McKenna create, I like Derek's character development, principal Sweeney, Lamont, etc., but I can't help but feel the film should have provided a more balanced social context à la The Wire.