THE BIRTH OF A NATION: A Revolting Development

Director: Nate Parker
Writers: Nate Parker, Jean McGianni Celestin
Cast: Nate Parker, Armie Hammer, Penelope Ann Miller, Jackie Earle Haley, Mark Boone Junior, Colman Domingo, Aunjanue Ellis, Dwight Henry, Aja Naomi King
Runtime: 120 mins.
2016

Sometimes it's impossible, or at least unethical, to discuss a movie without its cultural context. First of all there's the title, a blatant reference to D. W. Griffith's 1915 opus Birth of a Nation, a historically important film that functions as a glorified argument in favor of the KKK and slavery. This mirrored title is a thematic inversion, a statement of intent, and also a cheeky way to generate buzz.

Awards buzz, specifically. The anticipation for this film has come with the built-in assumption that it would be in some capacity as Oscar contender, as it is the sprawling biopic of Nat Turner, historical leader of a famous slave revolt in the early nineteenth century. And the Oscars only seem to pay attention to black films if they're about slavery.


That awards buzz recently hit a brick wall when allegations of sexual assault committed by the director and his writing partner two decades ago resurfaced. A fellow college student of theirs accused Parker and Celestin of non-consensual sex, as well as subsequent stalking after she came forward about it. They went to trial and were ultimately acquitted, insisting that the sex was explicitly consensual. Basically, they were let off the hook, but the shadiness of the whole ordeal has cast a pall over the film's aspirations. This context is especially troubling when watching the film because The Birth of a Nation uses the sexual assault of Turner's wife Cherry (Aja Naomi King) as a motivating factor for the protagonist, as portrayed by Nate Parker himself. It's... fraught.

Also a potential hiccup for the film's Oscar buzz is that it's not great. It's clear that Parker is extremely talented. His performance is strong in a predictable sort of way, and his direction shows flashes of extreme beauty and visual genius. There are plenty of isolated moments in The Birth of a Nation that hit hard and transcend the movie surrounding them. Sweeping shots of expansive cotton fields. A symbolic insert of blood oozing from unhusked corn. A slave silently watching his master die from a bleeding chest wound. All of these will stick with me.

To be sure, none of the movie is incompetent or clumsy. It's a self-assured, functional work. My issue is that it is rarely interesting. The subject matter pulls a lot of weight on its own; the horror of slavery is incredibly cinematic, and is always something that we need to be reminded of. But despite its provocative title, The Birth of a Nation does little that is new or fresh. The film is structured exactly like every other Oscarbait biopic out there: We get to see the entire life of some special guy, from his special childhood until his special adulthood. We learn his situation, we see him accrue motivations for action, then we see him do the thing that he's famous for doing. It's cookie cutter, and it's also incredibly individualistic. One of my issues with The Birth of a Nation is its myopic focus on Nat--how charismatic of a leader he is, and the ways that the horrors of slavery affect his mindset. Little focus is given to the community, or the wider social dynamics, or anything beyond Nat's experience and decisions.

In fact, a majority of the film feels a bit flat for that reason. It's all bad stuff that happens to Nat and his loved ones, like logs piled on the flame of Nat's righteous anger. For a brief time, I believed the movie was coming to life when the revolt began, but that outpouring of violence, while cathartic and tragic, was not presented in a thoughtful or nuanced way either. It has all the classic biopic symptoms of feeling like a predetermined sequence of events being offered up without much reflection. I know that the movie sees Nat's violent insurrection as a good thing, and I'm all about that--but the nature of that violence wasn't explored in any novel way. This is the opposite of a film like Selma that demystifies its legendary protagonist in favor of commenting extensively on the social dynamics of the time. Or even films like Amistad or Django Unchained that take the plight of slavery as an opportunity to tell novel and fascinating stories that add new perspectives to what we learned in school.

It's worth noting that those last two films I mentioned were directed by white dudes. Nate Parker might not be the visionary that Spielberg or Tarantino are, but this is more his story to tell than theirs, and there are aspects of The Birth of a Nation that shine for this reason. One in particular that comes to mind is the film's deconstruction of the omnipresent "noble white man as an ally for the oppressed slaves" trope. Armie Hammer's Samuel Turner is set up as that figure, only to be revealed as comparably monstrous. That's part and parcel of the film's premise that violence is the only path remaining for these oppressed people, an absolute horrifying truth.

With the dialogue about race so turbulent right now, it would have been a prime moment for a biting film by a black filmmaker to progress that conversation in some way. Instead, I had multiple moments of deja vu while watching The Birth of a Nation. In fact, thinking back upon the movie after leaving the theater, I got the inkling that I must have seen the film before. So many aspects of it felt familiar; had I not known it was a new release, I might have assumed I'd watched it a decade ago. Parker's passion project turned out to be more of a star vehicle, and while it will serve well to respark some important discussions (not just about race relations, but about sexual assault too, as it happens), I don't know that it can itself add anything new.

2 / 5  BLOBS