American History X (1998, dir. Tony Kaye)

Reflections from a Young Movie-goer

   More often than not, films with "American" in their title seem to be aiming for some sort of grandiose parable status. American Beauty, American Psycho, American Sniper, American Pop, all of these films are to some extent concerned with evoking something about the American condition, something which transcends the film itself. Part of it is inherent within the very use of "American" in the title, it makes this particular aspect of the film central. This is more than apparent in Tony Kaye's American History X (1998), which aims directly at the weighty issue of race relations and racism in the USA.

Told in a non-linear, fragmentary style, aided by the use of black and white photography to indicate past events, the story follows two brothers involved in the neo-nazi movement in Los Angeles. Edward Norton gives an immense performance as the older brother, Derek, who after being released from prison renounces his membership of the movement, only to discover his younger brother is becoming increasingly involved in it. The younger brother, Danny, played by Edward Furlong, is in trouble at school after submitting a paper about Mein Kampf, and has been tasked by his principle with writing a paper about his brother titled "American History X". The film then dots around, switching between black and white; charting in a non-chronological sequence Derek's path to racial hatred, activities as a gang leader and rehabilitation in prison, and colour; the events of the evening which involve Danny attending a neo-nazi party against Derek's wishes. The film's heart is in the right place, but there are some very obvious missteps in its approach which hold it back from being something far greater.

The fragmentary mode of story telling can result in some ingenious narrative structures, not to mention some sublime, filmic moments. Take for example Mike Leigh's Mr Turner (2015), by portraying only several carefully selected episodes from J. M. W. Turner's later years and using a kind of impressionistic realism that Leigh does best, he evokes almost perfectly not just the mind of the artist, but the era in which he lived. Furthermore, what we are not shown is just as important as what we are; the aftermath of something momentous can hold just as much power than the something momentous itself. Though this is not always the case, every film which employs a fragmentary method needs to be aware just how much it gives its audience. Ironically, much like its subject matter, American History X manages to be completely fascistic with its material, leaving very little room for contemplation or emotional depth. Too often, it feels as if the film is demanding its audience's emotions without properly earning them. As a result, there's one or two moments which fall completely flat in their intentions. Ideally, rather than taking any of these bits out, the whole film needs a least another hour of material to space out the scenes it intends to be more arresting. Either this, or it re-structures the narrative to create situations which allude to what is instead show.

The few effective moments of the film, though, reach much greater heights than the rest. Central to these are Edward Norton's performance which attempts to dissect the mentality of disaffected suburban youth, and almost succeeds if it were not for the heavy handedness of the narrative. The characters he's surrounded by resemble the scenes themselves, lacking the essential nuance and complication for real drama to occur. This is especially damaging to the film given the effort it puts into examining race relations. Unlike other films which tackle the same subject matter, for instance Boyz n the Hood (1991), to which it pales in comparison, it feels itself too worthy to spend time establishing characters or atmosphere. It hurries to get to the point without bringing its world to life first.

American History X isn't a bad film at all. It's just that there's a much more sophisticated, nobler film beneath the ineffective clutter of scenes that it actually is. A film only glimpsed momentarily, almost entirely lost if it were not for Edward Norton's performance which saves it from mediocrity. However, it does show a genuine intent towards analysing a very real and problematic mindset. Its a film that wants to make a splash, it wants to present on film an ugly side of America and show the humanity that hides underneath. Yet overmanipulative scene after overmanipulative scene consistently undermine its good intentions, and instead of humans we get simplistic ciphers giving a simplistic explanation for a complicated problem.  

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsPW6Fj3BUI 

Dead Man (1995, dir. Jim Jarmusch)

Reflections from a Young Movie-goer

   The Western is an interesting genre. Using the cowboy era, a relatively short span of American history, the Western has managed to mythologise the rugged individualism that sits at the core of American ideology. They are, in some sense, the fairy tales of the US, their macho heroes are not characters so much as ideals. And in the best of the classic Westerns, this ideal is opened up and scrutinized on a deeper level. Take, for instance, John Wayne's character in John Ford's The Searchers (1956), he is the image of rough, American masculinity, fearlessly pursuing his kidnapped niece across a dangerous, unforgiving landscape. But at the same time he is psychologically scarred, a veteran of the Civil War (having fought for the Confederacy), and on his quest he is as much driven by feelings of hatred for the Native Americans than by love for his niece.

The Western not only has the power to construct the American ideal, but also to deconstruct it. Ford doesn't necessarily condone Ethan's (Wayne's character) actions and motivations, but simply puts them up on screen for the audience to view from an apathetic distance. This apathy makes the Western increasingly existential, its process of deconstruction and introspection more self aware. Against an unpopulated and belittling backdrop, and alongside the various struggles and atrocities that accompany the growing pains of a nation, the Western's of today are a vastly more political and philosophical affair. Take for instance Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012). As a film-maker, Tarantino deals mostly with already established filmic types and ideas, and nowhere is this more evident than in Django, taking staples of the Western and putting them into new configurations; the liberated slave becomes a cowboy. But whereas the intentions of Django are more political, films like Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1995) are philosophical.

In Dead Man, Johnny Depp plays William Blake an accountant who journeys by train westward to the small town of "Machine" following the promise of a job at a metal works. Upon arrival, he finds the job has been given to someone else and he is driven out at gunpoint by the company's owner, John Dickinson (played by Robert Mitchum). With no prospects and very little cash left, Blake goes home with a former prostitute who sells paper flowers. In the morning, her ex-boyfriend surprises them in bed and, aiming for Blake, accidentally shoots her. While he is shocked, Blake nervously reaches for a gun and shoots him, missing twice before finally hitting him. Blake realises the bullet that killed the woman is deeply embedded in his chest (thus making him a Dead Man).The ex-boyfriend turns out to be John Dickinson's son, who dispatches three bounty hunters to track him down and bring him back dead or alive. While on the run, Blake meets a stoic Native American called Nobody who believes that he is the famous poet of the same name. What follows is a film that is all at once dark, gritty, hilarious, slow and incredibly dreamlike. Depp starts out looking more like Buster Keaton, but after he is confronted with his own mortality he slowly undergoes a transformation into something a lot more like Clint Eastwood's man with no name.

Like Tarantino, Jarmusch draws heavily from culture. Rather than just pop culture and filmic types, though, he expands this to include culture itself, and draws two or more together in various ways to create authentic, new experiences. This is most apparent in films like Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (1999), which fuses Japanese philosophy with a Hip Hop soundtrack to construct a new American cultural formation on film. In the case of Dead Man, though, Jarmusch takes Native American spiritualism and applies it to the filmic elements of the Western. The result is something that blends poetry and existentialism, meaningless death with fate. This is to put it simply, though, the film is rather more a melting pot of ideas and references which puts mood and inventiveness before plot and characters. As a result, it can appear increasingly jagged around the edges at times, feeling either daring and new, or overblown and vapid (or even both, for that matter). The vignette structure, fading to black after each scene, alleviates this somewhat by making the film seem more like a set of dreamlike fragments.

In comparison to the polished prose of John M. Maclean's Slow West (2015), Dead Man is pure poetry. Neil Young's spare, electric guitar soundtrack is repetitive, sometimes irritating in its recycling of sounds, but it feels almost like a mantra, collapsing the events of the film into a single, discordant memory, like a dream had the moment before awakening. The film's ending could easily loop back to the beginning, and play in an infinite cycle. This is the essence of the film's Native American spiritualism, thoughtfully meditating against an absurdist backdrop of death and deadpan humour. Alongside this is a plethora of Blakean imagery, riffing on the themes of innocence and experience, apparent in Depp's transformation and a scene in which he lies down next to a dead fawn. Here the American frontier is not a place of growth and prosperity, but death and decay. Life in this strange, deadly land can best be understood through the outlook of Nobody.

Jarmusch utilises a high sense of artifice, particularly in the town of Machine, not only to amplify the film's dreaminess, but also as cultural reference points for the audience. Drawing attention to these stereotypes, the film is much more effective in conveying its philosophy. The rugged individual is no longer the upright, American ideal, but an amoral, nameless cultural hybrid faced with his own mortality. Justice and honour aren't so important as an animalistic awareness of the chaos of being. Reason has no place in the West, neither on the vast plains nor the unruly frontier towns. The Western and its myths might have been dissected and scrutinised many times before, but Dead Man manages to do it to far more interesting effect.

It meanders, providing hits and misses along the way, but there's no doubt that the audience is left with a series of thought-provoking, poetic images that will resurface in the mind many days later. The cast and their performances are both exact, Gary Farmer's Nobody is endlessly expressive and enigmatic, while Depp is the exact reverse, stony-faced yet transparent, together they provide a highly watchable and compelling on screen duo. In his utilisation of the Western genre and its tropes, Jarmusch has confronted not just political ideas about the US, but philosophical ones about the very nature of being. This might seem a grandiose way of putting it, but the power of the dreamlike storytelling simply speaks on a more human level than those it shares a genre with. It might delight and dazzle some, others will be left aggravated and baffled, but surely if anything this is an immunisation against mediocrity, film's deadliest disease.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn2nQMfLqwg