American History X

"American History X" is a powerful movie. Its so deep enough that its ideas revolve in your head for a good long period.

This is a movie about a man who tries to save his brother from falling into the same wrong path by which his life has been ruined. The casting is amazing. Edward Norton is so natural. I have seen his performance in "Fight Club" and became an ardent fan of his acting. Edward Furlong is believable as a disillusioned teenager.

It deals with the controversial ideas like white supremacy, Aryan Brotherhood, and Neo-nazism. When the protagonist(Edward Norton) loses his father while doing his job as a fireman, he becomes so emotional and thinks that his father died due to racial related problems. He believes that black, Hispanic, Asian and other cultures ruin American life. He is misguided by a writer who believes in white supremacy. The writer takes advantage of his hatred towards other cultures and inputs all the negative ideas in his mind. He praised Adolf Hitler as a hero. He dramatically changes his appearance by inscribing Nazi and Aryan Brotherhood tattoos on his body and shaves his head. He becomes physically strong. Then he organizes crimes against other races at their super-markets in his neighborhood. The writer motivates him to influence other white people and they subscribe to these wrong revolutionary ideas. His behavior becomes violent and his family suffers a lot. Then he kills two black youths so violently who tried to break into his car. He gives one of them a "curb-kick". This kick is so violent that I could not get the image of the killing out of my mind for a long time. For this he gets jailed for 3 years.

He becomes a hero for his younger brother and his people in his circle worship him. His younger brother also cultivates the same wrong ideals. During his prison term, Norton gets raped by fellow cellmates for his individuality and not buying their ideas of brotherhood. He feels that they are not fighting for the cause. He gets radically changed by this abuse. He befriends a black prison during his term.

When he gets out of prison, he is shocked to find his brother in the same path lead by him. He fights with his people and tries to change them that they are following wrong ideals. But they reacted violently and called him a traitor. He leaves in belief that he could not change them. He tells his brother about all the things that happened to him in prison. He also reveals how bad it is to preach white supremacy. When he gets home, he removes all the Nazi, and Hitler posters and throw them out. The boy writes an article about Hitler's "Mein Kempf". His English teacher makes him to write another article throwing that into trash. His assignment was to write about his brother's trail and his change of behavior. Next day, the boy gets killed by a black student because of an argument he faced with the black boy the previous day. This scene is so emotionally moving that we feel for the boy as he will be killed after he changes his bad routine.

The movie is narrated in a non-linear style and the flash back episodes are filmed in black and white. Edward Norton plays his character amazingly brilliant. His portrayal of the two different shades, one of the Neo-nazi and the other a changed individual is truly brilliant. There's an Abraham Lincoln quote said at the end of the movie. That is: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."