American HIstory X

Last night I decided to finally catch the very controversial Hollywood flick American History X. At first glance the name kind of put me off. I imagined the film to be one of those very preachy, self glorifying American films with innumerable special effects. But out of sheer boredom, I decided to fight my initial skepticism and watch the film . The melancholic opening that of a sea shore was not perhaps the apt pre-cursor to the raw violence that the film would go on to narrate. The first scene began with a "big bang" quite literally. An explicit love making scene inter weaved with the setting up of a greusome crime that would go on to occur. I was glued. Edward Norton's character as Derek Vinyard is introduced with such chilling violence that one condemns him of being a brash product of racist hogwash. A firm believer in white supremacy ideology Derek is this self proclaimed Skin head who is loud about his politics of hate. A victim of circumstance Derek is a product of his father who is killed in a black neighbourhood by alleged drug peddlers. The murder of his father sets afire for his first racist pangs and learnings. In the course of the film we see this man's downfall and his progressive reformation in prison is narrated by his brother, Danny. Danny an impressionable teenager is fascinated and at the same time curious about his brother's hate, his involvement in the white supremacy movement and the path he his brother has sworn to follow till his dying day. Dannyn though a bit hesitant is compelled to join into the skinhead movement inorder to survive amongst his fellow white friends . What was most captivating in the film was how Danny is a witness to the scene of butchering that his brother Derek proudly executes. Derek who after a intense love making session in the same passion and heat kills the black men who tried to steal his vehicle outside his house. Danny watches on unable to understand the urgency in his brother to kill those two black men. Danny undergoes the most horrific change that night. He in his own state of helplessness has transformed into a Ne0-Nazi. But Danny doesn't come out as strongly as Derek and throughout the film he tries to reason through his history paper titled American History X about why his brother chose this path of blood, cynicism and hate.
Though the film delivered some nasty punches it also had some forced moments. With Derek befriending a black man in the jail who despite of being aware of Derek's grissley crime decides to be morally responsibile to reform Derek . In the jail's bathroom homosexual rape scene we see the vulnerable victim of hate in Derek. The subsequent emotional breakdown of Derek and the his final path of redemption keeps me hooked and intrigued. Though predictable in parts as to how the film would end I would say that in a long time I had seen something so powerful and honest. The 118 min long film offered no solution, no theory and no moral standpoint. It just in its brief interludes of violence, madness and racial hyperbole grabs the very essence of disgust in the audience regarding how hate can be futile and a path of peril. All in all the film makes you sad. It makes you sad about how hate is such a wasted emotion. It wastes a person completely.
Even in my day to day interactions I have people bewitched by this entire concept of propagating a certain doctrine of caste, race or perhaps some sort of twisted supremacy. The playground of blood and gore is so aesthetically set that I won't be surprised if people completely sane today turn into savages. I won't be surprised then, that barbarism can have a modern set and people are sitting on the aisle of the amphitheater with buckets of greased popcorn. But then I also know it would be so uncomfortable to swallow the pain, the hate knowing that in the end, it is all SO STUPID!