American History X

“Who would like some dessert?” says Derek’s mother (Beverly D’Angelo), trying to play peacemaker, and yet the conversation continues. American History X just keeps on talking, at least when Kaye isn’t going overboard with slo-mo shower jets and other visual “poetry.” David McKenna’s script is loaded with pungent monologues and combustible melodrama, but even its structure does a lot of explaining, piling on long flashback sequences to account for Derek’s journey and his influence on his brother Danny, played by Edward Furlong. The title refers to an essay Danny’s principal, Dr. Sweeney (Avery Brooks), requires him to write after turning in a book report hailing the virtues of Mein Kampf. Sweeney wants Danny to write simply about his brother Derek—and within those broad parameters, a movie (with scads of voiceover narration) is born.

As Danny writes, his brother has served out the end of a three-year stint at Chino for voluntary manslaughter, having killed two African-Americans in response to an attempted car robbery outside his home in Venice Beach. In the years since he’s been in prison, Derek’s white-supremacist views have calcified in Danny’s mind, too, and the skinhead movement in Venice has flourished in his absence. We learn the roots of Derek’s racial hatred: How his father, a fireman with prejudices of his own, was gunned down by a black man. How his grief and anger were stoked by a local white-power nut (Stacy Keach) who recognized Derek’s charisma and persuasiveness. How Derek was able to seize upon the sense of disenfranchisement felt by many in his racially evolving neighborhood. And how, finally, his rhetoric manifested itself in horrific violence. In this scene, Derek masterfully spins a rant on immigration into a pep talk for ransacking a Korean grocer:

Kaye, who also served as cinematographer, shoots in black and white and color, which for practical purposes helps situate viewers in time, but also suggests ways of seeing the world. The Derek of the past sees things starkly; Derek post-incarceration has a more nuanced perspective. But no matter where it stands in the timeline, American History X is strictly black and white. It’s not just that the script leaves no room for interpretation, but that its dramatic transformations are rarely all that plausible, especially in the scenes with Derek in Chino. It makes sense that his disenchantment with his Aryan prison buddies starts with his observing their hypocrisy in moving drugs through Mexican gang members. But Derek’s relationship with a black inmate (Guy Torry) on laundry detail is pure hooey, staking Derek’s hasty transformation on a handful of genial exchanges and a story about the racial injustice that led the inmate into the pen. Reforming a hardened neo-Nazi like Derek—who isn’t a sheep-like follower of racist dogma, but a confident proselytizer of it—would take a hell of a lot more than some disarming jokes over the folding press. (For a better example, look to The Believer, a superior film that turns to a much more profound source for conversion.)

Though overwrought and rigged like a Lifetime movie, American History X has a primal force that owes plenty to Norton’s performance, of course, but also to Kaye’s interest in American culture at its most extreme. It’s always fascinating when a foreign filmmaker comes to America, because their impressions are unique and telling, even when they’re off-base or marred by awkward hiccups. (Think Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms, or Wim Wenders’ various efforts here—none of them perfect by any measure, but they’re singular and resonant even in their misjudgments.) Kaye is drawn to the violent fringe of American society: His extraordinary 2006 documentary Lake Of Fire, an epic (and startlingly graphic) look at the war over abortion rights, sought out the most dangerous zealot on the scene, including one man who would later be convicted for murdering a doctor. The racially charged world of American History X is amplified a few notches above the real one, often to the film’s detriment, but Kaye’s in-your-face style does force viewers to confront tensions that tend to simmer more frequently than they explode. There’s a hyper-real, almost comic-book quality to Derek whipping off his shirt for a basketball game, ready to do battle against his African-American foes, wearing that Nazi tattoo emblazoned above his heart. And his eventual victory is pure ecstatic fantasy, like the anti-Hoosiers.

Such a scene seems unlikely right out in the open, on a public court in the middle of a big city, but this is a film that wants to have that uncomfortable dinner conversation. Much of the language Derek uses to persuade his skinhead followers and debate his adversaries is merely an n-word or two away from a modern talking head on cable news. And at a time when the presence of a black president has brought out insidious sloganeering like “Take our country back”—who’s “our”? And from whom?—there’s something refreshing about a film like American History X that puts everything on the table. It doesn’t make for convincing cinema, exactly, but cowardly it isn’t.

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Attention Chicagoans: On Wednesday, July 28^th at 7:30 p.m., the New Cult Canon comes to the Music Box Theatre with a screening of David Lynch’s Lost Highway. I’ll be there to introduce the film and lead a discussion afterward. Three reasons to come:

• It’s a revelation on the big screen, shot in luscious Panavision with a particularly aggressive Lynch sound design.
• It’s better than you remember it being, especially in the wake of Mulholland Dr.
• If you show up in strong numbers, perhaps such an event could be replicated in the future.

Advance tickets are available here.

Coming Up:
August 5: Heathers
August 19: Buffalo ’66
September 2: American Psycho