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The Birth of a Nation (2016)

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A

 

This decades Braveheart. Superbly acted and casted film. Very good pacing and staging you'd typically expect from a more seasoned director. I really liked the soaring and triumphant orchestrated score when the killing began.

 

The only real downside is that the rebellion was over in a flash in terms of runtime. I know the true life events only lasted 48hrs but I wish the fight scenes were longer and that we saw more rebellion footage.

 

Anyway, great directing job by Nate Parker. Worthy of a Best Picture nominee I think.  

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1 hour ago, lilmac said:

A

 

This decades Braveheart. Superbly acted and casted film. Very good pacing and staging you'd typically expect from a more seasoned director. I really liked the soaring and triumphant orchestrated score when the killing began.

 

The only real downside is that the rebellion was over in a flash in terms of runtime. I know the true life events only lasted 48hrs but I wish the fight scenes were longer and that we saw more rebellion footage.

 

Anyway, great directing job by Nate Parker. Worthy of a Best Picture nominee I think.  

Agreed with pretty much above. I really did not care for the symbolism shots in the movie. I thought it took away for the power of the film.  This film did not need the symbolism shot. It is one of my favorite films. The film is beautiful shot with a strong screenplay and excellent acting. Everyone in the film brings their A game.  I do wish the rebellion would have lasted longer in the film. 

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On 10/8/2016 at 2:14 AM, Dexter of Suburbia said:

Agreed with pretty much above. I really did not care for the symbolism shots in the movie. I thought it took away for the power of the film.  This film did not need the symbolism shot. It is one of my favorite films. The film is beautiful shot with a strong screenplay and excellent acting. Everyone in the film brings their A game.  I do wish the rebellion would have lasted longer in the film. 

 

Excellent review buddy. :-D

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Although it doesn't scale the heights of its ambitions, The Birth of a Nation is nevertheless quite an admirable film. By reclaiming the title of one of the most racially provocative films ever made, writer-director-star Nate Parker set a tall order for himself, and he succeeds in most regards. However, the film ultimately doesn't resound with as much power as 12 Years a Slave or as much audacity as Django Unchained. Ironically, Parker - the film's driving creative force - is the one who holds it back. He's good in all the hats he wears, but not great in terms of directing or writing and acting the role of Nat Turner. While inspiring, Turner feels somewhat two-dimensional: a character with great ideas and very clearly understandable motivations, but not quite enough "oomph" to elevate the film from "good" to "great." Parker is promising in front of and behind the camera, but I get the sense that the film would have been more effective as a whole if someone else had stepped in either as the director or the star. That being said, those criticisms - while worth noting - do not detract from the power of the film's evocative imagery or the depressingly relevant examination of how racial relations perpetuate the cycle of violence in this country. The drama is potent throughout the film, and although the breakdown between Parker's Turner and Armie Hammer's white slave owner doesn't feel as tragic as it could (which I'm guessing may be the result of material left on the cutting room floor, given the fact that the running time falls under two hours despite the sprawling scope of the narrative), it still humanizes and legitimizes Turner's actions through showing the degree of horror he witnessed outside of his immediate experience and the refusal of those with the power to stop it to intervene in a meaningful way. As an impassioned polemic against the sustained racial divide and injustices in America, this film acts as a bold and fiery protest that succeeds far more often than it doesn't; however, fair or not, it just doesn't quite measure up to the heights of other films that have tackled either the injustice of slavery or the wish fulfillment that Turner enacted.

 

B+

 

Stray observations:

 

- It's funny that multiple other posters have referred to Braveheart in this thread, for that's exactly the film I was thinking of as a point of comparison. Like Braveheart, it's a passion project from a writer-director-actor that takes a radically provocative approach to presenting a significant example of a citizen rising up against an unjust institution. Also like Braveheart, it's incredibly on-the-nose about its Christ figure symbolism. As if it weren't obvious enough, we even get a shot of young Nat Turner standing in front of a painting of Jesus. And also like Braveheart, I feel like either a change in director or actor would have improved the film as a whole - and probably a change in director in each case. I feel like a more experienced director could have shaped Parker and Gibson in more meaningful ways.

 

- I swear that I tried as hard as I could to separate the art from the artist while watching the film. (Again: the Gibson/Braveheart parallels are hard to resist.) Whatever may be true of Nate Parker's past actions (which sound pretty horrible, given all available evidence), I do think that he's a promising artist who could be a terrific actor or director. He just needs a more experienced voice to guide him in either role.

 

- The reports of the squicky nature of Parker including rape in the film were overblown. The rapes in this film occur offscreen, which detracts from distractions amid the scandal that dogs the film.

 

- Despite the sense of backhanded praise that permeates the above review, I really did like this film a whole lot. The biggest hurdle to clear is that there have simply been two really damn great films that have covered similar territory in the last three-to-four years.

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The Birth of a Nation is shrouded in controversy. It feels near impossible to discuss it without getting into the case involving writer/director/star Nate Parker, but yet, this reviewer will attempt to, barring the following sentence. At points the case’s shadows fall over the film, and it just adds an air of unintentional unpleasantness that completely distracts from the otherwise strong work. Yes, Birth of a Nation is a strong film. The acting is powerful, and the direction, for the most part, is intriguing despite moments of, for lack of a better word, immaturity. Heavy-handed imagery and a very poor cinematographic style are Parker’s biggest technical mistake, but not the film’s biggest issue.

 

This work has a critical mistake in act structure. The third act, the rebellion, should be the best part of the film, the pay-off to what we’ve all been waiting for. Yet, Parker chooses instead to spend most of his time showing Turner’s slow epiphany that drives him to rebel. All the material in the first and second act is good; it’s just disappointing that what it’s building to ends far too soon. This might be a problem with the editing as well as the script, the former of which is plagued with misguided inserts and montages along with a few unnecessary sequences. Regardless, a better Nat Turner film would’ve dwelled just as much on the rebellion as the build-up, if not more. As it is, the film lets know who Nat Turner before his biggest moment of triumph, but once that begins, he becomes nondescript. A two-act structure might’ve done the story better justice, or even just a few more rewrites.

 

There’s a lot to love in The Birth of a Nation. It’s a fascinating exploration of slavery and how inhumanity can bring forth inhumane justice but justice nonetheless. If one chooses to skip The Birth of a Nation due to the controversy, such a choice would be absolutely understandable and would be an admirable choice. If one does see it though, they’ll find an intriguing, if flawed, drama that kicks off fall 2016 in a quality fashion, even if the controversy does overshadow it at points. B-

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