#81 Watch every single dvd I haven't already watched

In keeping with watching Rob's more disturbing movies, we watched American History X last night. This one is just so damned powerful. I was trying to think of the differences between what Oliver Stone did in Natural Born Killers and what Tony Kaye does here. Both movies have a message. Both make their point. But while Stone bludgeons his audience with meaning, Kaye just lets the story say what it has to say. Okay. I am not a big fan of Stone's work but I will admit that I thought NBK was his best effort at pretention.

And yet, without the artifice, Kaye manages to tell a better story. Period. Traveling between the present and past, black and white representing memories, and a voice over narrative, the story unfolds as the Vinyard family falls apart. You know that this movie is going to be aggressive from the beginning as Danny sees someone breaking into his brother's truck and the camera cuts to Derek having sex with his girlfriend in the next room. What happens next is a catalyst that has long been building and when Derek snaps everything falls apart.

But there is still a mess to be cleaned up and Danny is following in his brother's destructive footsteps. And herein lies the movies moral and lesson.

This one is violent. Horrifying because it is too true. But to give some indication of how superficial I can be, the thing I remember most clearly is how amazing an actor Edward Norton is. In the scene when he is arrested there is a moment when he looks over at his brother who is witnessing everything. The police come up behind him as he turns with this look of absolute mania. Not on his face. The face is not remarkably expressive in this moment. Rather, all of the insanity and violence of the character is in his eyes. And when the police start to handcuff him, dragging him away to the police car, the look shifts to hatred.

I have a lot of feeling about this movie. I would recommend it but with the caution of being prepared for darkness, violence, and a feeling of catharsis. Aristotle, in Poetics, discusses the dramaturgical catharsis, saying that it is an emotional cleansing. This movie does this wonderfully and without apology. None is needed.