Racist wackos don’t come any scarier than Edward Norton’s
blistering performance as Derek Vineyard in Tony Kaye’s 1998 drama American History X. Forget Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper or
Stephen Graham in This is England,
movie skinhead neo-Nazi thugs all bow to the superiority of Norton’s bulked up,
wild-eyed, tattooed and terrifying Derek Vinyard.
The film is a beautiful but harrowing mix of style and
substance with some of Kaye’s visuals coming across a tad over-stylised. Black and white is used
for grim flashbacks while the slow motion and choral and orchestral
soundtrack are perhaps slightly over used but never detract from the central
performance from Norton. The visuals can
be awe-inspiring, Norton’s unrecognisable physique all brawn and swastika-covered bulk. When director Tony Kaye hits the
slow-mo, it’s impossible to take your eyes off the brutal thug even as he
commits the most heinous of racially motivated violence.
The narrative is non-linear with regular flashbacks to
Derek’s racist past being cut into the present day story of Derek’s return to
his ruined family after a stint in prison for his inexcusable actions. Derek’s little brother Danny (Edward Furlong
in a rare but brilliant post-Terminator 2 role) narrates the story as he
struggles to write a paper on his brother after being forced to re-write the
assignment because his first draft was on Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
We see Derek as a brutal but articulate and charismatic
thug, rallying his troops, committing unspeakable brutality and slowly but
surely corrupting the minds of his foolish followers and more worryingly, the
impressionable young Danny. The film
even dares to show the joy of being in a gang; the triumph of a team of white
basketball players against their black rivals is filmed, scored and edited to
show the lure of the racist culture to a young, scared white kid.
But in the later scenes, the audience gets to see why Derek
has had a change of heart whilst in prison.
His desire to set Danny on the right path is fully justified by what he
has experienced. And if you think that
nothing could make you sympathise with such a vicious, heartless thug, think
again. Despite Derek’s disgusting
behaviour that leads to his incarceration, you will feel for this guy by the time his old school principal (Avery
Brooks) pays him a visit in the prison infirmary.
It is interesting to note that director Tony Kaye (mad as a
bag of spanners by the way) tried to have his name removed from the project
after Norton is said to have re-edited the film giving himself more screen
time. Kaye wanted his credit to be
Humpty Dumpty, but broke a Director’s Guild of America rule that would allow him
to use the pseudonym. Despite these
disputes, the film is a brutal, thought-provoking near-masterpiece. Norton gained 30 pounds of muscle to play
Derek and his transformation from skinhead psycho to sensitive family man is
handled with dexterity. If I was him,
I’d have given myself more screen time too with a performance this visceral.
It is a film about hate and about the roots and causes of
hate. It is about redemption and
reversing wrongs. Like so many other
films about hate and revenge, there is a cyclical theme to the violence and the
hate. Danny notes near the end of the
film that ‘hate is baggage’ and the film carries this baggage through to the
tragic and painfully inevitable end. It
is a bold conclusion, sure to be mis-read by a minority of the audience of this
type of film. But to those with half a
brain, it is a bitter lesson in the never-ending cycle of violence that spirals
out of endless hatred.
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