+4
American History X is stupid. It feels really contrived. OK, OK, everything in almost every movie is contrived in that it's written and performed and recorded for the sake of you the viewer, but this one is contrived in a classroomy way where the world is bent and hobbled to to fit a simple moral progression. And it's a good moral (this sort of hate is too much baggage. It's self-destructive and just destructive in general.) but it reduces the world too much for my tastes. It's kind of like a Chick Tract but less crazy and more predictable. It's about the importance of character and seeing other people as potential friends rather than labels, but then all the black characters are just convenient vectors for Norton/Furlong's learning to accept the brotherhood of man. I guess there are guys like the Principal in real life but the movie doesn't really flesh him out opting instead to offer a platform for Norton to show off his range of faked emotion. I'm not heartless enough to say I wasn't affected by scenes like Norton weeping over his dead brother at the end but I wouldn't call it good acting since he's just showing me what I would expect to see in that situation (whereas good acting would be showing me something I wouldn't expect but that makes perfect sense when I do see it). Anyway, does it really matter? I feel kind of dirty for getting involved in critiquing actors. Sucks to you guys for tricking me again! Movies are more than actors and characters, especially when it's about "real life" characters who probably wouldn't be that interesting if you met them in real real life. (Talking about most skins and high school teachers [sorry, mark! Not you!]).
I'm sure a good movie about skins and schoolmarms (we should make a dice role-playing game out of it) exists but it doesn't need oscar-performances and prolix, articulate characters. Instead we have Edward Furlong learning that black people are just as good as white people because he meets a nice (if somewhat nondescript) one, and from a story his brother tells him about also meeting a nice black person in prison.
A couple more potshots at the acting: Just for shock value and quality of performance, the bit where they mock the girl having a seizure in Romper Stomper is more intense and troubling than the curb-kicking scene in American History X, to me. I've also probably seen too many Wayans Bros. films because every "powerful" scene in AHX just made me want Keenan Ivory to walk on with his mail bag and shout "Message!" I would rank Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood as a more powerful movie about angry stupid young people because it's actually made to appeal to (and mock) stupid young people rather than to give hand-job fodder to book of the month knitting circles and class discussions. And its "message" (your way of acting is silly bs) is certainly just as nuanced.
Actually I guess I kind of disagree with this movie's message, or at least the implied part (which may not have been there, I only watched the movie once and it was a long time ago) about people being not just labels (we need to humanize everyone by giving them our fake earnest respeck -- that's a crap philosophy). Maybe they are just labels but that still doesn't mean we should kick their brains out on the curb.
This has been a pubic service announcement by:
Linus Palso
Last edited by linespalsy; 09-19-08 at 02:02 PM.
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