*Warning* Crit. Hit more often than not intends to avoid discussions of the polarizing and politically charged variety. While there's nothing wrong with discussion, these are topics that tend to bring out the worst in people and can lead to an ugliness I'd rather not associate with the beauty of storytelling that I love to celebrate. Especially in today's climate. However, I can't in good conscience review this film without expressing awareness of its relevance to the current state of sociopolitical issues.
Whatever problems you may or may not have with this film, check your agenda at the door, You can't convey tone through text and I refuse to heed any comments of insensitivity regarding real people undergoing real suffering in the past, present, or future.
“The Birth of a Nation” is an excellently woven film narrative of an ugly piece of American history that should be more thoroughly examined for critique, a strong directorial debut for its star and director Nate Parker, and easily one of the best films of 2016 thus far.
While I usually save these sort of direct praises for the end of a review, this is a film that obviously has a lot of baggage to unpack that goes far beyond the general worth of the film’s entertainment value, for lack of a better terminology, that I tend to hone in on when assessing a movie’s worth and I don’t want my final verdict to be lost among the threads of praise and criticism I give the movie that are a tad less binary than what I typically boil things down to.
This is a hard film to sit through; so much so that I personally don’t see myself doing so any more than another 3 or 4 viewings of it in my life time. If you’re not willing to acknowledge the harsh and unfiltered reality of a well meaning but flawed nation’s dirty laundry without decrying that reality as “unnecessary to revisit” or “propaganda against a modern day blameless majority,” go ahead and stick your head in the sand for the next 4 or 5 months because this movie’s probably not going anywhere far even after the closing ceremonies of the 2017 Oscars.
The story of southern slave Nat Turner and his failed slave uprising that led to the deaths of tens of members of white slave owning families, resulting in stricter slavery laws along with the retaliatory deaths of hundreds of blacks regardless of social status or connection to the man, is a boiling point of an ugly historical institution many would rather ignore but few would dare to excuse.
Telling the life story of a man robbed of a humanity that he was never truly allowed to hold on to from birth leading a mass murder of people that weren’t necessarily all malicious could have easily landed offensively on both ends of the spectrum by undermining a victimized people’s anger at being denied basic due liberties or glorifying a racial divide through an almost exploitative indulgence in revenge driven sadism.
Parker’s solution to this is straddling the line between two extreme interpretations, leading to a film that would have been good in any other year but resonates so powerfully given the state of repressed racial tensions rising to the surface today that its brilliance only shines that much brighter.
Several of Turner’s victims include people who didn’t quite harbor ill intent in their abuse of blacks and slaves but were unfortunately ignorant victims of a society that practically teaches them to suppress all empathy for those below them. That doesn’t absolve them however of occasionally flaunting their good fortune and status just to remind blacks of their place on the totem pole as a means of feeding their own egos.
The rebellion, born as a culmination of slaves seeking to simply be treated as people rather than animals, isn’t without a few members partaking in the anarchy just to satiate their own blood lust. Even Nat Turner himself isn’t above scrutiny.
He proclaims regularly upon reaching his decision to act that he believes to have been chosen by God to fight and earn the freedom of his entire race after discovering that the same religion used to keep them subservient has just as many passages in its primary scriptures condemning the entire institution. This kind of interpretative subtext serves as the backbone to the entire movie.
Was he just an ordinary slave pushed to the breaking point by his first substantial whipping out for personal revenge? Did he altruistically hope to save his race or become a martyr that could incite future uprising against a society built upon injustices to lead them to a better tomorrow? Was he insane or driven delusional by being allowed to intellectually flourish enough to fully grasp the hypocrisy of those he owed his insight to?
However one may wish to feel about Turner is left to one’s own interpretation granted by a spin-free narrative of the life of a man who went to extreme and harmful measures to battle against a society that wrongfully caged him and his kind like animals for simply existing.
His legacy was the manifestation of problems that continue to plague society today despite a brighter status quo that has stripped intolerance of its overwhelming power but not eliminated it entirely.
The film kicks off with events that set the audience on edge and never truly allows the viewer a moment of respite across its tightly edited 2 hour runtime as it runs the gamut of abuses suffered by slaves casually by those that both mean well and aim to do harm conveyed by strong performances that rarely dip into melodrama.
“The Birth of a Nation’s” only unfortunate set of hiccups are admirable but awkward decisions of a director that is clearly green to his field despite a raw talent reined in by somber material that he clearly has a personal investment in.
Occasional instances of metaphysical imagery were well intentioned but add little to the film outside of odd visual flourishes that pass by so quickly you’ll be confused by them longer than they actually showed up on screen.
Similarly, the film attempts to focus in on some of the more unsavory white men as some sort of symbolic antagonists for Turner and his rebellion to aim their rage at. Bringing up southern cruelty is unavoidable in a film about plantation slavery but revisiting these specific characters over a span of years comes off more as a structural safety net than something that genuinely contributes to the conversations that the film clearly wants to open up.
These minor flaws barely hinder a film that will face a greater battle against those that don’t care for its high social relevance than the first time slip ups of a first time director.
8 Sociological Phenomena out of 10
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