The Birth of a Nation
Directed by: Nate Parker
Written by: Nate Parker - Story by Nate Parker & Jean McGianni Celestin
Starring: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King, Aunjanue Ellis, Colman Domingo, Esther Scott, Jackie Earle Haley, Penelope Ann Miller, Gabrielle Union, Mark Boone Jr., Roger Guenveur Smith, Dwight Henry, Tony Espinosa, Jayson Warner Smith, Jason Stuart
Biography/Drama - 120 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 5 Oct 2016
Written by: Nate Parker - Story by Nate Parker & Jean McGianni Celestin
Starring: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King, Aunjanue Ellis, Colman Domingo, Esther Scott, Jackie Earle Haley, Penelope Ann Miller, Gabrielle Union, Mark Boone Jr., Roger Guenveur Smith, Dwight Henry, Tony Espinosa, Jayson Warner Smith, Jason Stuart
Biography/Drama - 120 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 5 Oct 2016
After earning the top two award accolades at the Sundance Film Festival, audiences marked The Birth of a Nation as a ‘must see’ film and one many called ‘controversial’. I do not understand the second part. What is controversial about an abused slave rising up to kill the people enslaving him, his family, and his people? After sympathizing for Nat and his fellow slaves through the relentless whippings, rapes, and torture, the audience foams at the mouth for Nat to finally scream, “Revenge!” as he does in the trailer. I, along with every audience in the world, was quite happy watching Jamie Foxx bloodily dispatch slave owners in Tarantino’s fantasy, Django Unchained. The fact that The Birth of a Nation is based on the true story of Nat Turner should make it all the more uncontroversial; let us all learn about a man struggling against the darkest stain on America’s history.
The Birth of a Nation arrives in theaters with a separate barrel full of controversy surrounding its writer, director, and lead actor, Nate Parker (Non-Stop). Parker was accused and charged with rape in college. He was eventually acquitted but while ineptly recounting that era of his life he let this grotesque sentence drop, “I was never taught the idea of consent in sex.” Parker’s public relations and personal nightmare shadows the release of his epic film stuffed full of scenes regarding the abuse of the female body. The juxtaposition spurs philosophical musings on the concept of separating art from the artist. A few vocal people on social media proclaim they will boycott The Birth of a Nation because of its creator. Whatever truth lurks in Nate Parker’s past, I am not going to forget about it, but leave it to others as I want to focus on Parker’s version of Nat Turner and its place in 2016.
The Birth of a Nation arrives in theaters with a separate barrel full of controversy surrounding its writer, director, and lead actor, Nate Parker (Non-Stop). Parker was accused and charged with rape in college. He was eventually acquitted but while ineptly recounting that era of his life he let this grotesque sentence drop, “I was never taught the idea of consent in sex.” Parker’s public relations and personal nightmare shadows the release of his epic film stuffed full of scenes regarding the abuse of the female body. The juxtaposition spurs philosophical musings on the concept of separating art from the artist. A few vocal people on social media proclaim they will boycott The Birth of a Nation because of its creator. Whatever truth lurks in Nate Parker’s past, I am not going to forget about it, but leave it to others as I want to focus on Parker’s version of Nat Turner and its place in 2016.
I am only familiar with Nat Turner from high school history class and William Styron’s fictionalized account of him. Parker says it is a more than relevant time to teach the man and his actions to new generations considering today’s racial climate. I assume he means Black Lives Matter, Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, etc… I am unsure of the connection between a slave uprising in 1831 Southampton, Virginia and contemporary issues of implicit bias and persistent shootings of unarmed African Americans by the police, but I agree, it is a good time to discover an event some say encouraged the eventual Civil War to start earlier than it otherwise would have.
Don’t let the previews mislead you. 4/5 of The Birth of Nation is preamble to the rebellion. The audience uncomfortably endures the countless indignities and suffering perpetrated on the Turner Plantation to finally push Nat to call together his fellow slaves William Wallace style and urge them to unite to overthrow their evil oppressors. Unlike Braveheart, a film showing a man motivated purely by revenge to slaughter the English, Nate Parker says Nat Turner was divinely inspired. A mystical opening scene around a secret campfire shows elders proclaim Turner a prophet and a future leader of men because he bears unusual marks on his body. This is a possible explanation for Nat’s intense religious inclinations.
Unusual for slave children, Nat teaches himself to sound out letters and learns to read. A somewhat gentler slave owner, the master’s wife (Penelope Ann Miller, The Artist), teaches Nat to read the Bible as she explains his brain could never understand all the other books meant for white people. She also tells Nat he is a special boy and what must that do to a young, impressionable slave psyche; both his elders, slave and slave owner, enthuse upon his gifts. The Turners, led by Nat’s eventual master, Samuel (Armie Hammer, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) profit off of their homegrown black preacher. Local plantations pay a fee to Samuel for Nat to come to their homesteads to pacify restless, tortured slaves using cherry-picked Bible verses. This is a tactic Nate Parker ably employs to show us plantations came in all different shapes, sizes, and sadistic attitudes. Nat only lived in the first circle of hell on the Turner Plantation. Some slaves somehow endured on an altogether higher level of pain as Samuel and Nat experience first-hand how other slave owners treat their property.
Conflicted Nat sheds tears and grimaces as he defends the institution of slavery in front of his trembling fellow man with his masters glaring behind him. Filmed in Savannah, Georgia, these plantations appear authentic but do not look much like Southampton. Southern Virginia’s oak trees are not draped in a haze of Spanish moss the way Georgia’s are. Director of Photography Elliot Davis (The Iron Lady) showcases the slave’s unrelenting natural tormenter, the cotton field, in glowing light using careful, gliding panoramic shots. The Turner cotton field stretches all the way to the horizon lacing a serenely beautiful scene with the knowledge of the blood and sweat soaked into its soil turning its aesthetic appeal into a place of carnage and cruelty.
It is ironic the very book his owners thrust into Nat’s hands and mind is the same book that taught him God is on the side of the oppressed and offered him a foundation to stand and fight. Billed as a period action-drama, Nate Parker’s Nation is a tense slave story in the realm of Roots, Amistad, and 12 Years a Slave. The action inspires intense feelings of nausea watching the whip tear apart flesh, a chisel knocking out teeth, and the brief guerrilla revenge attacks during the climax. While The Birth of a Nation falls short of a true masterpiece like 12 Years a Slave, its visual and verbal imagery is sharper. Look at the movie poster; the American flag's red stripes consist of bloodthirsty slaves hoisting axes and pitchforks. The title, The Birth of a Nation, confidently skewers D.W. Griffith’s 1915 pro-Ku Klux Klan film saying, ‘No sir, look to Nat Turner for the true birth of this nation.’
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