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In 1915, director D.W. Griffith made a landmark silent film called Birth of a Nation, a movie that used many groundbreaking filmmaking and storytelling techniques that were simply unheard of at the time. Unfortunately, it was also insanely racist, presenting freed African-Americans during the Reconstruction as mindless beasts that could only be stopped by the “heroic” actions of the Ku Klux Klan. That film has since faded away into history, while a new 2016 release of almost the same name has burst onto the scene to tell an entirely different story. Directed by a first-time director and with a relatively low budget, can The Birth of a Nation leave its own mark and meet the high praise coming from the festival circuits? Let’s find out.
Editor’s note: I will be talking about The Birth of a Nation as a film, and will not be providing any commentary on the ongoing controversy surrounding its director/actor/writer/producer, Nate Parker. That type of discussion is for people much more intelligent than I, and I will not say anything more about it for fear of trivializing or misrepresenting the issue. It is my sincere hope that the truth comes to light soon, and that the parties involved can find some closure and peace.
The Birth of a Nation is the story of Nat Turner (Nate Parker), a slave preacher who led a failed revolt in 1831 in Southampton County, VA, and the events that led up to it. It follows his time as a boy, being allowed to study the Bible by his master’s wife Elizabeth (Penelope Ann Miller), as well as his adult life working under Samuel Turner (Armie Hammer), who he grew up with, and his marriage to his wife Cherry (Aja Naomi King). When nearby plantations offer the struggling Samuel money to have Nat preach to the slaves and calm them down, Nat finally sees the true horrors of slavery and comes to believe that God has chosen him to rise up and face this injustice. The following revolt killed eighty whites and struck fear in the hearts of slaveowners across the South, while riling up slaves for the coming Civil War.
One of the most impressive things about this film is how well made it is, especially for a first time director. Nate Parker put a lot of his own money into this film and clearly has a passion for Nat Turner, and it shows. The film has several moments where the imagery and certain shots portray Turner as some sort of hero, almost as if being a leader akin to Moses was his destiny. Another thing I have to applaud Parker for is for being bold with his direction, choosing to be uncompromising with showing the brutality of slavery (like one shot of slaves hanging in the breeze that holds for several seconds). His most brilliant decision in that regard is to not show most of the horrific acts, only the aftermath, such as the aftermath of a rape committed against a woman named Esther (Gabrielle Union) and a vicious beating against his own wife. I also liked that Parker wasn't afraid to get arty either, with certain pieces of imagery being very strange in an effort to make us think about what it all means, and that's something we don't see very often in these films.
I also really liked a lot of the interesting concepts that were brought up in the film. Samuel Turner and his family are presented as “nicer” slave owners compared to the others in the area, treating their slaves relatively well and not engaging in the sadistic torture that their neighbors do, but can we really call them good if they still owned slaves? This is a question that’s been brought up before (directly so in the brilliant 12 Years a Slave), but never quite as subtly as this. No one ever voices this question out loud, but the audience’s view of this is tested as Samuel and Nat’s relationship disintegrates and we see what Samuel is willing to do to save his family name. The other big struggle presented is Turner’s own relationship with the Bible, where he has been directed to read passages that seem to encourage slavery while there are plenty of passages that seem to condemn it. For a film that espouses a lot of Christianity and quotes directly from the Bible multiple times, it’s incredibly ballsy to challenge the Scriptures in this way and I felt like I needed to stand up and clap for this reason alone. Not enough films do this, and I honestly think they should because it's an angle to this type of story that we haven't really seen very often that is critically important to why slavery was able to be kept around for so long.
The best thing this movie has going for it are the performances, which are all excellent. While he’s not the most polished director, Nate Parker is a wonderful actor, and he imbues Nat Turner with a humanity that you wouldn’t expect from Nate Parker the director (who idolizes Turner). There are scenes where just his facial expressions alone say more than five pages of dialogue, and you see the tension rising in him as the film progresses until he finally snaps. Armie Hammer, while not given as much to work with, is also great as the conflicted Samuel Turner, who wants to take care of his slaves and grew up with Nat but also wants to save his plantation regardless of the cost. His transformation into the heartless slave owner who eventually drives Nat to his breaking point is difficult to watch, and you kind of wish that the movie would just alter history so that these things wouldn’t happen. All the actors do really well, with the other standout being Aja Naomi King as the beautiful and wonderful Cherry, who undergoes perhaps the most tragic event in the entire film in a scene that almost broke me in the theater.
Despite the things that Nate Parker does right as a director, there are also plenty of missteps that come from his first time at bat. Some of the scenes feel a little awkward, the pacing can be off at times and sometimes the imagery he chooses to show can get a little too arty for its own good, being too obtuse for even a pretentious fool like me to really appreciate because I just have no idea how it fits into things. One really awkward scene (which shows the budget limitations they had) involves Nat Turner seeing Cherry as an angel, except it looks so fake that it’s almost laughable and breaks all the emotion of the scene. This was something that could've been done differently or cut out entirely, yet for some reason he chose to keep it in. I think that while Parker did a good job, he might have been wearing too many hats that took away some of the polish that the film really needed to hit home as hard as movies like 12 Years a Slave did.
The biggest problem that this film has is the script, which is great when it comes to developing Nat Turner but falls flat in most everywhere else. While Samuel Turner has some interesting moments, it’s mainly because of Armie Hammer’s performance that we actually care. Everyone else is pretty one-dimensional and serves their purpose in the story, but have little to no relevance beyond that. Jackie Earle Haley plays a slave hunter that comes in and out of the film, and instead of having some sort of character he just plays a standard evil slave owner that you hate because he’s a standard slave owner. Contrast that with something like Michael Fassbender’s Epps character in 12 Years, who had real depth and character that made the audience see how truly depraved and evil he truly was, leaving an impact on you. I also feel like the actual revolution isn’t really given enough time to develop, with it taking up maybe fifteen minutes of the film and then the impact is barely touched upon. I don’t want to play the screenwriter card and rewrite the film, but focusing on this revolution, how it came together and how Turner became convinced that he was called to lead it might have been a little more interesting and unique. I don’t even want to get into plot points that are brought up and then dropped, like how the Scriptural conflict I mentioned as a positive earlier never really gets resolved. It seems like Parker had so many ideas that he couldn’t fit them all into his movie, and maybe if he had just relegated at least one of the roles he’d taken on to somebody else the script could’ve been given another edit to tighten it up.
Look, it’s easy to tell at this point that I don’t think The Birth of a Nation lived up to all the hype I’d been hearing. First-time director mistakes are littered throughout, the script is undercooked, and it lacks some of the depth that other films about slavery have. However, Nate Parker’s excellent performance, his ambition as a director, and some of the heady topics that the film does address more than make up for the deficiencies. At the end of the day it’s the performances, cinematography, and powerful scenes that really make the film worth seeing, and I would highly recommend it.
My rating: 4 stars out of 5
The Birth of a Nation is in theaters now.
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