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movie review - American History X

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 1999.07.03

This movie is ably filmed, alternately in colour film (present) and black-and-white videotape and film (the past). It's also a very straightforward thing, with few diversions or distractions. Distractions wouldn't have worked, anyway; this is the story of a young man who grows up to be a captain in a skin-head army following the shooting death of his fire-fighter father by a black thug. It follows his descent into prison life, and his subsequent evolution to man wanted by the police, his former gang, and the posse of a rival thug he killed along the way.

While an engaging story, this thing falls flat in two critical places. First is Norton's supposed start on his path to neo-nazism where his father essentially talks him into it over dinner when the kid's about 17. I found this very flimsy, because 1) the kid would have been exposed to a parent's views (and we're talking '...it's all a black conspiracy...' long before, 2) I strongly doubt that the kid would have been convinced, given his environment (black classmates, black teachers, etc) 3) It wasn't a very realistic conversation (as if the writer(s) were looking for a short-cut to build up some history without worrying about context?!). The second point is the conversion of the neo-nazi back to a more enlightened route, as it were. The central character turns his back on his skinhead colleagues in prison for doing business with non-white drug dealers, but himself befriends a black man along his route to redemption. Contradictory and ridiculous.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupery