October 12: Birth of a Nation (2016 - Nate Parker)

★★★

Nate Parker’s first feature aims high and hits the mark in several ways.  It gives us a compelling portrait of antebellum slavery, de-glamorized from the nostalgia glaze of Gone with the Wind and its descendants.  The slavery we see here is one of utter brutality, from beatings to hangings to knocking slaves’ teeth out with a hammer.  And the slaveholders themselves are not a refined aristocracy.  Some are educated, but many are scrappy farmers who have to work their slaves hard in order to make ends meet.  They are sweaty, dirty, unshaven and pot-bellied.  Birth of a Nation gives us visceral portrait of slavery as a harsh institution sustained by viciousness.

The cinematography and art direction figure prominently in creating this effect.  Muted hues inform many shots, often blue/grey outdoors and brown indoors, which suppresses any brightness or gaiety of color.  The slave quarters are dark and spare, furnished with handmade items, while the slaveholders’ homes are larger though only slightly more decorated with more ornate appointments.  Sweat glistens on everyone, and everyone has an unkempt look, even when they seem to be trying not to look that way.  Elliot Davis’ camera, for example, often catches Mrs. Turner with strong back or side lighting, which highlights the fuzz growing on her face.  While the camera sometimes uses cliché’s like circling a dance to help us participate in the fun, it more often adds to the film’s material portrait of the era.

Likewise, the script has some clear strengths.  In an inversion of DW Griffith’s film, Parker tells this story from the perspective of the enslaved, so these slaves have names, families and human emotions.  We see Nat’s love for his wife, mother and grandmother, and we see their love for him.  When he visits other plantations to preach, we see the suffering of the other slaves through his eyes.  This perspective draws our sympathy to the slaves and puts us on their side.  And the script ranges beyond the slaves to portray the effect of slavery on the slave-holders, too.  Samuel Turner sees the immorality of slavery.  He’s taken aback at some of the abuse that owners inflict on their slaves, and we see him defend Nat against a white man at one point.  It is implied that he turns increasingly to gin to deal with his inner moral conflict over his participation in the institution of slavery, but he still exploits slaves, in particular using Nat to raise money to get his farm out of debt and restore his family’s name.  The script of Birth of a Nation isn’t one-dimensional in its portrayal of slavery.

There are also interesting historical elements in the film.  We see slaves subjected to every indignity imaginable with the intention of dehumanizing and therefore pacifying them, but Birth of a Nation shows how slaves maintained their humanity.  Their history speaks in religious practices and forbearers’ stories we encounter while ceremonial practices like weddings preserve their culture.  Africa is constantly in the air, whether in cowry shell accessories or in the rhythms of the film’s music, and this provides yet another unifying element among the enslaved.  The movie also shows us how the slaves preserve their own identities.  Cherry, for example, shows Nat a blouse that her mother has sewn her child’s name into lest the child forget it; Nat similarly gives Cherry a family token from Africa.  Such gestures show the persistence of humanity despite the slave owners’ harsh efforts to undermine it.  The film also dramatizes some of the unique ways slaves maintained their own culture right in front of the slave-owning whites.  At one point, we watch Nat use coded biblical references to condemn slavery while slave owners look on obliviously.

Despite the value of the historical portrayal here, the script of Birth of a Nation ultimately undermines the film.  Although the story of Nat Turner and what motivated his rebellion lies at the center of the movie, the script ultimately muddles its portrayal of the central character.  For much of the movie, we see Nat increasingly angered at the treatment of slaves, from the mistreatment at nearby farms to the abuse his own wife suffers.  But in the latter third of the film, Birth of  a Nation suddenly pushes Nat’s religious belief as his primary motive rather than his anger at injustice.  After we’ve watched Nat’s moral growth in secular terms for most of the film, it’s jarring when he’s suddenly willing to incur punishment because he wants to serve god by baptizing the white man.  We’ve seen Nat’s knowledge of god before that, but the film has given us little hint that this knowledge has affected his behavior before this extreme decision.  And shortly afterward this event, Nat is looking for signs from god to begin his insurrection and cloaking himself in the robes of martyrdom.  The script here gives us little indication of a religious motivation for Nat’s uprising and leaves us confused when the central character suddenly starts giving religion as a reason for his rebellion.

The script also has several other distracting elements.  For one, most of the women have little character depth and largely appear as accessory to the need to develop the character of Nat.  When Nat needs a love interest, the script brings in Cherry, and she helps to generate sympathy for Nat at a later point.  The mother and grandmother perform similar functions, developing Nat as a loved, grounded character.  In addition, the script builds Nat’s growing anger at slavery in a series of obvious steps -- visits to different farms, each with an increasingly brutal treatment of the slaves.   And while some of the story’s turns to magical realism work, they can be redundant or distracting.  The vision of Cherry as an angel or the bleeding ear of corn hardly add to the psychology or drama of the moment.

At times, Birth of a Nation can feel like the vanity project of someone with strong talent but who’s not yet in total directorial control. That said, this film gives us a strong insight into one of the worst parts of our national history, and for that alone, it’s a worthwhile contribution the movies.