THİS “American History X” REVİEW CONTAİNS SPOİLERS

Honestly, this is a film that could be discussed for hours. While its content is relative due to its political views, I won’t express my own political views here and will only criticize the aspects of the film’s content. I want to start with my general thoughts.

Edward Norton and Edward Furlong both are fantastic.But especially I have to say that every role Edward Norton plays feels incredibly realistic. I love Edward’s acting; he’s an actor I admire because I think he suits every type of role. His talent is absolutely undeniably impressive. The difference, the change, between Edward Norton’s facial expressions in the black-and-white flashbacks and his expressions in the color, present-day scenes speaks volumes about his character development.

An example scene of Edward Norton’s facial expression in colored scenes.

An example scene of Edward Norton’s facial expression in black-and-white scenes.

The use of black-and-white to depict the past also provides a compelling narrative, fitting the theme of racism. The storytelling sequence keeps the viewer constantly in suspense, and the order in which events are presented is meticulously crafted. Overall, there are no boring scenes. Every scene, every detail, and every dialogue contributes to the film. What I mean is, it doesn’t tire you out while you’re watching; it makes it accessible to everyone.

The film’s main focus can be said to be how racism, radicalization, and hatred consume people, and how hate speech destroys family and social structures. Although it deals with Derek’s gradual attempt to abandon the ideology he embraced, I think there are many aspects of this that are open to criticism.

First, I want to address this... yes, Derek embraced Nazi ideology (we can’t just say “Nazi” and leave it at that; we need to prove whether they depicted an ideology from prehistoric times, and we can understand this from the Adolf Hitler posters). Derek ends up in prison, and while initially befriending Nazis, he suddenly slows down his relationship with them. I don’t think any Nazi group would be subjected to such treatment.

Especially considering that homosexual Nazis were treated the same as Jews during Hitler’s time, brutally murdered in concentration camps, no Nazi would ever rape another homosexual, let alone joke about it. On the contrary, Nazis were extremely intelligent and well-equipped individuals in terms of education, art, and culture, but they were racist to the point of nirvana. The Nazism depicted in the film has nothing to do with real-life Nazism, so I thought that the treatment Derek received might be one of the reasons he abandoned Nazi ideology.

However, later, while reading reviews of the film, I came across this question;

“Do you think the German Nazis of World War II and the self-proclaimed Nazi mindsets of 2000s Americans could be the same?”

From this perspective, the fact that the behavior of the imprisoned Nazis doesn’t perfectly match the Nazis isn’t so surprising, because ideologies, as they are, can be transmitted and understood differently by every mind and era. Besides, he’s on good terms with a Black man around the time this happened, and forgiving all Black people because of that would have led to inconsistencies or softened his views on racism.

The film chose the second option, meaning they couldn’t leave those parts inconsistent (since Derek’s motivation was first instilled in his mind by his father before his death, it was good that this reason wasn’t ignored and was placed within a logical framework for the film’s progression).

The scene where the “anger” was sharpest was the final scene.

No philosophy or action built on hatred makes life better; it only brings destruction. When Derek chose hatred, he couldn’t change his father, he went to prison, he ruined his life; When he tried to distance himself from hatred, the price he paid was his brother’s life. Philosophically, the film says this: once the cycle of hatred and violence is started, it doesn’t stop the moment you say “I’ve given up.”

The poison Derek unleashed on the streets in the past has come back to haunt the person he most wanted to protect: his brother. Honestly, I don’t usually comment on these kinds of films because, as I said, political views are variable and should be respected, but American History X, aside from its content, was a very high-quality production. In the final scene, after everything that happened to Derek, it put a satisfying and logical ending to the film as a cruel twist of fate.

-Elif Gerçekcioğlu presented …-