Review of American History X (1998) by Gross R — 18 Jun 2012

Rewrite your history for your own sake.

The interesting title of this movie supposedly comes from the teacher in the school (Dr Sweeney) who tells his student (Danny) to write an account of his life especially in regard to his relationship with his brother who is a Neo-Nazi Skinhead whom he idolizes and wants to follow in his footsteps. The teacher is telling Danny not to be stuck in the past of others who have made the same disastrous choices but to find for himself whether he is capable of thinking on his own rather than follow the logic and rhetoric of a gang of bigoted Nazis. By writing out his own story, Danny first revisits his past, and finally discovers through the experiences of his brother in prison that indeed he has only been following the prejudiced logic of others, a logic that is fortified into an emotional frenzy of hatred by the archaic rhetoric of people like Hitler, and in this process they have become mere pawns in a game of domination that seems to go on eternally. The whole point of the movie is that this game of domination is a lose-lose game of false or illusory honor or pride in which even the 'king' is eventually forced to commit 'hara-kiri', whereas the pawns, whether on the side of the oppressor or the side of the oppressed who react violently, are either slaughtered or lead a foolish, meaningless life of subservience or futile violent reprisals in which they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again, learning nothing from their past.

So American History with the suffix X (symbolizing the unknown - that is, capable of being reinterpreted without racial prejudice) is the attempt to breakout of this vicious power game, so that something valuable can be learned from History, rather than be trapped in it. The X is also a sort of tribute to Malcolm X who renounced his racism against whites and said that the problem of race was not merely an American problem but a world problem - a problem of humanity (Dr Sweeney's story about dealing with the problem is quite similar to that of Malcolm X's transformation of attitude).

This movie is an attempt to deal with this problem by pointing out that this must be dealt with fore-mostly in the educational institutions and that the teachers have a crucial role in this. If this issue is not dealt with at the school level, then it becomes extremely difficult to correct at the later stage of an individual's life as there are no existing institutions that deal with this issue of reforming racial prejudices and attitudes.

The turning point in the movie comes when Dr Sweeney posits the key question regarding the problem: "I didn't get no answers because I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions - has anything you have done made your life better?" Yes, everything depends upon the questions that you put to yourself and then honestly try to answer those for your own sake.

A near perfect acting by all the leading cast, excellent editing and well researched script that presents all the main arguments on this issue concisely makes this must-watch movie, especially for young people in schools.