The choice to title this film Birth of a Nation is an ironic reappropriation… or something. I actually don’t understand Parker’s thought process here. I’ve wanted to see the 1915 landmark remade to be not-racist for a long time, and this film took its title and applied it to a completely different but still racially charged story. So… yay? Image courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Birth of a Nation fails to effectively tell its story on several fundamental levels. It is an inept execution of a concept that was weak to begin with.
The Birth of a Nation is a dramatic retelling of the Nat Turner (Nate Parker, who also writes and directs) slave revolt in 1831, which lasted two days and claimed the lives of 60 white people. Turner teaches himself to read at a young age, and instead of immedaitely murdering him, his owners give him a Bible, and he grows up to deliver sermons for his fellow slaves. Instead of portraying him as a crazy person who thought God talked to him, the film has young plantation owner Samuel Turner (Armie Hammer), who grew up alongside Nat, pimping him out as a black preacher to other plantation owners who think he can calm their slaves down. Nat Turner is exposed to groups of slaves in worse and worse conditions over the course of the film, and he eventually snaps and leads a rebellion.
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