Page 4
October 5, 2016
Photo Courtesy F ox s earCh l ight P iCtures
Armie Hammer (from left) portrays Samuel Turner, Nate Parker portrays Nat Turner and Jayson War-
ner Smith portrays Earl Fowler in a scene from “The Birth of a Nation,” opening Friday, Oct. 7.
Review: ‘Birth of a Nation’
bluntly tells tale of Nat Turner
Film opens
Thursday in
local theaters
by l indsey b ahr
aP F ilM W riter
“The Birth of a Nation “ has
had more expectations placed on
it than any movie could reason-
ably bear.
When the film about Nat Turn-
er and his 1831 slave rebellion
premiered at the Sundance Film
Festival, it was held up, unfairly
or not, as everyone’s great hope
to save us from another year of
#OscarsSoWhite. Some handful
of months later, it became repre-
sentative of something else when
the focus shifted to the then lit-
tle-known fact that its creator and
star, Nate Parker, had a past that
involved not only a rape allega-
tion, but the eventual suicide of
the accuser.
Neither is a fair lens through
which to judge “The Birth of a Na-
tion.” Complicated people have
and will continue to make films.
We’ll all have to reconcile with
that in our own way. #Oscars-
SoWhite, meanwhile, will never
be solved with just one film — and
certainly not by the first to screen
after another year of homogenous
nominees.
The fact is, “The Birth of a Na-
tion” is a fine and promising debut
from Parker, who also co-wrote
and produced. It also feels very
much like a first film, too, unable
to reach the lofty artistry that it’s
striving for in juxtaposing un-
imaginable human injustices with
both lyrical spirituality and shock-
ing violence.
Parker follows Nat Turner from
childhood to his death at age 31.
Turner was hanged for the Vir-
ginia rebellion. Under the cloak
of night, he and his fellow slaves
went house to house slaughtering
every man, woman and child who
had a white complexion. It lasted
48 hours and over 50 people were
killed. The incident was an early
catalyst to the Civil War.
Out of necessity, “The Birth of
a Nation” takes a lot of liberties
with truths and unknowns about
Nat Turner, fleshing out the skel-
eton of what the history books tell
us.
Instead of having Nat being
sold a number of times throughout
his life, Parker keeps him with the
same owner — the Turner family
— throughout. Matriarch Eliza-
beth Turner (Penelope Ann Mill-
er) takes a shine to Nat and helps
to teach him how to read. While
that part is true, keeping him with
the same family allows Parker to
show a young Nat (Tony Espino-
sa) being friends with his eventual
master Samuel (Armie Hammer)
from youth. He also gives Nat a
lifelong nemesis in a slave track-
er (Jackie Earle Haley), who, by
the end of Nat’s life, will have run
down his father and hurt his wife
Cherry (Aja Naomi King).
Ultimately, it makes “The Birth
of a Nation” less a good faith at-
tempt at reconstructing Nat Turn-
er’s life leading up to the rebellion
and more a stylized fable, loose-
ly rooted in an extraordinary true
story.
Parker does, through a skillful-
ly internalized performance, show
the evolution of a radical through
unthinkable dehumanization. Nat,
who has taught himself to preach,
travels from plantation to planta-
tion with Samuel reading scrip-
ture to other slaves. It’s there he
sees that not all are as relatively
benevolent as the Turners. The
images haunt him — from the a
little black girl being led around
on a leash to a man having his
teeth hammered out. The horrors
build inside the once docile Nat
until erupting in a passionate ser-
mon, and, eventually the uprising.
It’s all juxtaposed with imagery of
C ontinued on P age 8