A Powerful Film

I have watched many movies. Some people tell me that I waist my time, glued to the television screen, however I feel differently. I have learnt many things from watching movies. As sad as it sounds possibly more than I have learnt in school. In school we are force fed knowledge of history and science along with other useful information, but will we actually remember the information? When information is incorporated into story and visual form, not only will I remember it but I will enjoy it as well. This is not to say that school is useless, but that movies can be equally educational.
There are many categories of movies. There are fun movies, sad movies, scary movies, happy movies, action movies funny movies and much more. Not all of these movies are good. In fact a lot of them are pretty bad, but there are some movies that will leave you with a strong feeling. Whether it’s a lump in your throat, a wild feeling, a happy feeling or even an inspirational feeling. Those movies that embed themselves into your mind and emotional system are the good movies!
American History X is a movie that I can watch over 100 times and will never seize to hit me hard. In fact I learn more and more every time I watch it. The great acting allows me to study the emotions and reasoning’s for each character’s actions. Before I get into anymore about why I love this movie, let me summarize it as best I can.
A Firefighter and his family live in Venice beach, in the late 80’s early 90’s. In the town there are “minority citizens” incorporated into their lives (which is why they believe there were so many gangs in the community). The father is murdered doing his job.
Derek Vineyard the oldest son, remembers his father’s racist views on affirmative “blacktion,” and becomes embedded into the same mindset. He quickly rises in the neo Nazi gang at Venice beach to 2nd in command under Cameron Alexander. Being a smart kid he helps recruit and rile up violence against these “unworthy Americans.” His younger brother Danny is an observer to all this, while his mom and sister remain liberal in there views. Danny is woken one night from the shatter of a breaking window. He looks out side and sees black men stealing their father’s old car. He runs to get his brother who sleeps in a room with a huge swastika over his bed. His brother runs out in his boxers, boots and a huge swastika tattoo on his left chest. He shoots one of the men and injures another. The third man in a car gets away. Derek viciously kills the injured man in possibly the most horrific way I’ve seen in any movie, a curb stomp. Danny watches all this from the front lawn. Derek smiles while being taken away in handcuffs.
In prison Derek quickly becomes allies with the Aryan gang, but soon realizes that they are all fake. The fact that they do business with other races angers him. No one now likes him. Not the blacks, the Aryans or the Mexicans. His one true friend is a black man whom he has to work with folding laundry. It is because of him that Derek is not killed in prison. After some bad experiences and thought Derek truly has an awakening to the fact that nothing he has done has made his life better. His old history teacher professor Sweeney, a black man, helps him through his struggle and gets him out of chino prison after 3 years.
Derek comes out to find that his family is impoverished living in a tiny apartment no bigger than their old living room, his mom sick and worst of all his brother Danny following in the same footstep he was in. Danny wrote a paper on Hitler, claiming him a civil rights hero. Sweeney wont expel him since it will not benefit him in any way, however he must write a new paper on the last few years of Derek’s life.
Through this paper Danny gains perspective on what he is doing to himself and the stupidity of the neo Nazi gang. But things do not end well for this family for they were to embedded in chaos.
The movie was fed to us gradually through a mix of present occurrences and flashbacks. The directors revealed information in a non-chronological manner. I believe they did this in order to remind us that things were not always so messed up for this family. The wrong people influenced Derek and Danny in their time for need. Derek when his father died, and Danny when his brother was in jail. The flashbacks remind us that they are human, and that they learnt corruption they were not born with it. And as Sweeney says in the movie, “ they can unlearn it too.”
I am Jewish and the fact that this movie has caused me to empathize with a former neo Nazi, is further proof of how well this story was written and told. We view the transitions of the characters from corrupted young minds, into civil human beings who did not know any better.
American History X is brilliantly written. I learn so much from the movie, and I am yet to meet some one who dislikes it. It displays the fragility of the human mind, and the ability people have to change. It displays the reality of communities, where the youth don’t know any better than to join in these gangs. It displays hate in man. It displays love in man. It brings out emotion.