Review of The Birth of a Nation (2016) by Andy F — 20 Aug 2017

A polarizing film that I don't think has gotten a fair shake. I liked it and thought it was a powerful film, even if it was a little romanticized and formulaic in some places. To start with, Nate Parker turns in a great performance as Nat Turner, and Aja Naomi King does as well as his wife. The rest of the ensemble cast is strong. The cinematography is beautiful, and Parker captures several beautiful, haunting images, the most indelible one for me coming when Turner notices a white girl skipping across a porch with a black girl skipping behind, playing, and yet on a leash. It's violent, but it also has quite a bit of tenderness, and is effective in showing that the enslaved were thinking, feeling people, just like you and me, and it also honors their culture. Lastly, it's accurate in showing the context for the rebellion (and certainly as accurate as many lauded historical films), and I think its power lies first and foremost in showing us the events unapologetically from an African-American's perspective. Parker uses a bit too much of a heavy hand at times, not uncommon for a first-time director, but this is a film that should be seen, and with an open mind.

I think we've become so inured to scenes of brutality that they don't register with us anymore. We see slave owners brutalizing their "property" - human beings - and our reaction starts becoming either (a) oh yes, I've seen all that before, I know, I know, and by the way so-and-so shot it better, or (b) surely he's over-the-top in this scene, shamelessly exaggerating and distorting history. I think we have to acknowledge that these things happened. They happened. Lynchings. Ripping families apart. Rape. Extreme cruelty. Humiliation. Even the most liberal view at the time still believing in the black man's inherent inferiority. And on and on. This was the context of the rebellion. It's almost entirely accurate, or a reasonable portrayal where history is not known, and I forgive it for the places it may not be as artistic license - most notably Turner's own wife being raped, which was scrutinized so much that I think people missed the larger point.

We're taught about the glory and honor of the Confederacy in most history classes, and oh yes, by the way, Nat Turner led a bloody rebellion three decades before the Civil War. You're going to tell me that the myth of the noble Southern gentlemen, the slaveowner who took loving care of his ignorant slaves for their own good, is more accurate than what this film shows? You're going to have the one-star reviewers with comments that literally begin with lines like "Not saying slavery was right, but..." and then say racism no longer exists in America?

Nat Turner was a man who was highly intelligent, learned to read and write despite having limited educational opportunity, correctly likened slavery of blacks in the south to the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt, and (very) courageously attempted to rebel against extreme injustice. The film gets all these things right. Why do we not see him as a hero in our nation's history? Killing women and children is horrible, but put it in context, and ask, what was happening to Turner and his people before they did that? For centuries. To millions.

The name of the film of course disrupts D.W. Griffith and his glorification of white supremacists, but it also makes us pause and think that for a portion of the citizens of our country, July 4, 1776 was not the birth of their nation. They were still in chains, and had not been able to declare independence. It's interesting to think of Turner's rebellion as that seminal moment, as the birth of a new nation, and I would not have thought of any of these things or known as much about him without this film. If it goes too far in depicting him as a 'nice guy', not showing all of those he killed in his uprising or not showing the odder side of his religious visions, well, maybe we should be thinking that a romanticized view is both a reaction to both our current culture, as well as a perspective someone else has that we haven't considered before. Making us think. You know, as artists do.