What are your thoughts on American History X?

Do you feel sympathy for the main character? Does his transition from blind hatred to acceptance, to compassion move you at all. Does the fact that he does the best he can to turn his younger brother away from the path, that he himself took, make you feel any more sympathy for the main character?

I watched this a few months back, and my thoughts have become a bit diluted over time.

however the Directors dislike of his own film is interesting.


so to conclude lol @ the terminator kid being racialist.

His conversion away from racism was a bit contrived. "Hey, those *****ers are stinking up community, but this guy I met here in jail is funny! I forgot about their entertaining quantities. I guess they're alright after all." Maybe we should just send Chris Rock and Chapelle to perform for skinheads and Neo Nazis.

yeah i kinda agree that it was contrived, but getting raped & the trauma that comes with it will change you alot.
i was expecting something more dramatic.

Still good film

Yeah that would be impossible to deal with, but he got raped because he turned away from the racism ish. The death of the brother was done real well though.

^ ah i forgot the order of what things happened

I think it's a good showing of redemption, but I'd also heard that Norton had gotten his way on a lot of the editing, and had his way accepted over the director's. I like the way it was released, but I'd be interested in seeing the director's vision as well.

Quite honestly, I think that it was a pretty powerful movie. For the majority of the movie, I was angry (I felt this way when I was watching Higher Learning, too). I was so angry, in fact, that I didn't want him to reform--I wanted him to die.

I remember being disappointed by his conversion. So he got raped. That's not even half of what he deserved, I believed. But that was my irrational self talking at the time. Upon reflection, I thought it was a wonderful take on how one's eyes can be opened. We all come to paradigm shifts in our lives for different reasons and under different circumstances. Everyone has a different "rock bottom". I ended coming to appreciate the change and valuing it because it showed the most important thing possible--anyone can change.

To be fair, Norton's character's father, was fairly bigoted. He was a bright eyed kid, that worshiped his English teacher(who was a black man), but after his father's death, he allowed a manipulative hate monger to warp his mind. Not to say any of his actions were acceptable, but I think he found out on his own, that he'd been wrong, and had been manipulated into taking out his aggressions, whilst taking his anger out in the wrong outlet.

That's that's the saddest part of the film. His brother is headed down the same path, and he does his best to turn him around, but when his brother realizes that Derek was right, he's killed by a young, angry boy, that was probably from a similar background of hatred, and bigotry.

Indeed, Juli. The great tragedy of that movie is the travesty of cyclic racism and how pervasive it can be.