directed by and starring Nate Parker
Should you see it? I'll leave it to you. I don't have compelling arguments either way. Sorry if that's disappointing.
When the news began to trickle out of the film festivals that a new movie about the historic Nat Turner slave rebellion, one that was independently financed, directed by and starring Nate Parker was garnering rave reviews, many African American film fans pricked up our ears. A film about an amazing moment in our history, when an enslaved person rose up with hundreds of others in a bloody battle against their enslavers was finally being made? A film made outside the studio system? When this film was snapped up by a distributor for a record-setting $17 million, we were enthralled and agog.
And then began the furor over the college rape case in which Nate Parker was a defendant. Then the revelation that the victim in the case, for which Parker was acquitted but his roommate and the new film's co-writer was convicted, had committed suicide. The news was bad, conferring infamy on Parker and a long shadow over the fortunes of his film. Ugh, ugh, and ugh.
So what did Parker do? Apparently he started out to apologize, but sooner or later hubris and a sense of embattled entitlement took hold, and he either dug himself deeper in interviews or failed to engage the media at all about the film. He didn't seem to grasp why the public was up in arms about what he saw as a small footnote from his distant past, tried to wave it all away as youthful folly without a deeper discussion of rape, consent, respect for women, or his own role in what occurred. His refusal to truly show remorse or understanding backfired, big time. Now the media outlets are trumpeting the fact that his opening weekend was less than satisfactory.
Now, I try to watch films for their own artistic merits. I might stay away from a star or filmmaker's work because I don't find them to be to my taste, but not because of their personal lives or choices. So I went to see The Birth of A Nation with a mind to evaluating the narrative, performances and the production on their own terms.
But I have to admit that it was difficult to do and I'm not sure that I succeeded. Because my reaction to the film is, in truth, a kind of a shrug. It is not a bad film. It's beautifully shot. But I don't think it's a particularly great film either; I think its merits are in showing us a story that has never been shown on the big screen in this fashion before and in assembling a stellar cast and crew to create that film. Despite my best intentions, the bad publicity surrounding Parker, and the evidence of bad judgment he showed at the time of the rape and in defending his actions some 11 years after, have torn away any goodwill blinders through which I might have viewed this first directorial effort.
I may have judged Parker's performance differently, because as it stands, Parker shows us the facts about Turner, but his script doesn't give him a unique personality.
Nat Turner was taught to read as a child. He bore unusual marks on his body. He was a preacher. But the film never shows us his responses to those events or roles -- who did he think he was? Did he get fulfillment from being able to read when other slaves could not, what was the level of his religious belief? How did others see him? It's true that the state of being enslaved provided little room for emotional or creative expression. But slaves were human, and within humanity the traits of love, joy, art, and sensitivity are always present. Now it's true that the tropes of moviemaking often require that the audience root for a hero not just for his actions but for who he is -- someone larger than life, whose emotional conflicts are writ large on screen. The film attempts to perpetuate a kind of religious mysticism about Turner, but it comes off muddled. The viewer is left wondering when this Nat Turner fellow will catch fire -- and spark a fire in us as well. While Turner does of course see his sign in the sky and draw others into his plan, it seems to come late in the film and without the facts of history already telling us that a rebellion is coming, the film itself fails to build enough tension on its own.
There have been critics who say that the film misrepresents the roots of the Turner rebellion by making it about the attack on his wife and the rape of a fellow slave's wife. I didn't feel that those were the main causes -- I thought that Turner's observation of how all enslaved people were forced to suffer humiliations, indignities, abuse and torture was cumulative, leading him to read the Bible in a new way.
The film doesn't truly show the extent of the mayhem Turner and his followers brought to the white slave holders of Southampton county before they were brought down. Yes, we saw some chilling violence committed against his own master and a neighboring plantation -- and believe me, that violence was hard to watch -- but the way the film was cut, it left me with too many questions about the timeline and the overall impact of the rebellion. We did see Turner and many other African Americans hanged -- also, very hard to watch. But in terms of filling in the blanks for the viewer, perhaps Turner was smart not to. None of us was witness to those long ago events, certainly not Nate Parker, and perhaps if he had reached to create fictional events or imbue Turner himself with fictional traits, we'd be lambasting him even more.
In conclusion, I don't have much to say either way about the film. If you are so inclined to see this work, see it. If not, don't. I think Aunjanue Ellis, the actress who plays Turner's mother in the film, wrote one of the best essays I'd seen (in Ebony, read it here) about reasons to see the film, so I leave you with that.
