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Notes -
I rewatched "American History X." It's both as good and on-the-nose I remember. But one good way in which it's on-the-nose is that Derek (Norton's character) gives long monologues about rational racial grievances, showing how radical ideologies tempt a certain kind of person in a certain situation. Any other good examples of media doing a good job at this?
Some misc. thoughts:
The main plot has two inciting incidents that co-occur, with one being Derek's younger brother getting in trouble at school for choosing Mein Kampf for an English assignment about works related to civil rights. The school principle defends him to his English teacher, pointing out that it met the requirements of the assignment... but didn't do so by calling it "work to rule," which was a missed opportunity.
Norton was too old for the role and it really showed in the flashbacks... but his performance justifies willingly suspending disbelief.
The overqualified high school teacher/principal and community outreach something-or-other is played by Avery Brooks, filmed concurrently with Deep Space 9, in which he played Captain Benjamin Sisko (the one who responded to Q placing them in a boxing ring by punching Q in the face - totes the best Star Trek captain). This made me wonder if this role was the reason his character on DS9 grew a goatee mid-season, rather than between seasons, but it was filmed two years after the debut of the goatee.
The rest of the supporting cast was also great, including Ethan Suplee, best known for playing Randy Hickey (the brother) in My Name Is Earl. .
There are a lot of obvious continuity errors, confusingly mismatched sightlines, and things that just don't make sense. Again, the impact of the performances justify willingly suspending disbelief.
It was filmed disproportionately in close-up, with few wide shots. It's unclear if there was a thematic intent to this, but it's interesting.
All but the youngest character in the family (including the dead dad) have first names starting with the same letter, but nobody lampshades this.
I respect the film for actually allowing Derek the space to articulate his arguments behind his opinions. I recently linked to a dumb rap-metal song released six months into Trump's first term which is essentially three minutes of "punching Nazis is good, actually". The bridge features the line "what makes you think you're the superior race?", which the vocalist clearly intended as an armour-piercing question which would instantly silence any alt-right types listening. It's sobering to be reminded by American History X that there are plenty of far-right people who would not be flummoxed by this question at all, and who would actually be able to present very detailed and persuasive arguments as to why they endorse white supremacy.
That aspect of the film and Edward Norton's exceptional performance aside, I don't really rate this movie. Making a convincing movie about neo-Nazi or far-right extremists seems to be remarkably difficult to do - Romper Stomper with Russell Crowe is even worse; Green Room was very entertaining, but only nominally about this theme (if the skinheads had been Mafia members and the band had stumbled in on a Mob murder, the plot of the movie would have been identical). The only such movie I remember being really convinced by was This is England. The naturalistic, largely improvised performances, verité-esque cinematography and unobtrusive score sold the experience far more effectively than American History X, in my view. Like American History X, it does offer its far-right characters a chance to express why they arrived at their opinions, but this usually comes in the form of impassioned ranting rather than Derek's sober, articulate (hence chilling) expressions of his worldview. I've heard The Believer with Ryan Gosling is very good, I must check it out.
I recently stumbled across this video essay talking about American History X's behind-the-scenes drama, concerning how director Tony Kaye's original cut of the film was rejected, and Edward Norton stepped in to handle the recut when Kaye proved extremely uncooperative (to the point of suing the producers and starting a knife fight with them in the press). Even though the video essay essentially takes Kaye's side and says Hollywood mistreated him, I came away from it with the distinct impression that Kaye is a colossally pretentious narcissist who is extremely difficult to work with. If he'd been willing to compromise and play the game a bit, he might have eventually been granted an auteur license which would ride him to glory at the Oscars. Instead he torpedoed his career right out the gate, and unsurprisingly hasn't helmed a major Hollywood production since.
There's a clip in the video when Edward Furlong is doing a promotional interview for the movie and the journalist asks him about the behind the scenes controversy. He says something to the effect of "Yeah, it's a pity that the producers weren't happy with Tony's cut of the movie. Maybe one day they'll release the director's cut on DVD or something, that'd be cool." As more than one YouTube comment points out, it's pretty embarrassing when a 21-year-old former child star with a drug problem comes off as more reasonable and emotionally mature than a 46-year-old director.
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