Marisa Ghazalli - American History X American History X is a powerful movie and it was most difficult to find a scene to analyze as every little bit was brilliant. However I have chosen a particular scene which I feel contributed enormously to understanding the movie as a whole. In this scene you have Derek (Edward Norton), Danny (Edward Furlong), Davina (Jennifer Lien), Dorris (Beverly D’angelo), Stacey (Fairuza Balk) and Murray (Elliot Gould) sitting down at the dinner table. This terribly in depth conversation over different values and views quickly resulted in disagreements and lead to Davina wanting to leave the dinner table. However, due to Derek’s inabilities to listen and forceful character he refuses to let her leave and violently force feeds her a piece of turkey as she tries to escape resulting the family in a terrible breakdown. I believe this whole scene was used so that we were able to gain an insight into the different views, opinions and personalities of all the characters. The decision to place all the characters here sitting around the dinner table was a device used to tell the audience about the political background and a chance for us to critically analyze what each character had to say and then watch the response of the others. The message that the director is trying to portray to the audience by sitting Derek at the head of the table is the strengh, forcefulness and leadership abilities that he possesses and how deep down he is possibly capable of change. This scene will also give you a strong message stating that hatred and racism will eventually destroy those closest to you and his full personality can almost be seen in this scene. The harshness and strong tone he uses help to outline him as a confidence strong individual and with his face being featured mainly in close-up’s the film maker is trying to show you that he is almost like a ‘in your face’ type of person. The same
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