I had been waiting with great anticipation for this film, but it was not what I expected! And it was with good reason it was not what I expected, because The Birth of a Nation gives a slave narrative not seen before in Hollywood. So it had to take a different approach to telling this story, an approach I simply wasn't used to.
I am used to films about slavery doing enough character development of a handful of slaves to bring me to tears when they are mistreated, terrorized, beaten, whipped, raped, separated, murdered, and tortured. There was no such character development here. However, it was fitting with the narrative. This is not a story about a slave who is focused on the freedom of his own family, rather Nat Turner (Nate Parker, Red Tails) is a slave who starts an uprising on behalf of not only his family but all slaves. He wasn't looking for ways to escape to freedom, he was igniting a flame to end slavery and get freedom for all slaves! This means he was also doing this for slaves he had only seen once, as well as slaves he had never met. Why? Because slavery is wrong! So we as the audience also need not have an emotional connection to each slave we see being mistreated. And not having that character development in place as a tool to create such a connection, I think brings the audience closer to Turner.
On the one hand we see slaves we only see on the screen once being tortured as Turner is taken to plantations owned by soulless slaveowners who are looking for a Black preacher to preach their slaves into further submission, and on the other hand we do not see any of the actual rape take place in the two main rape scenes. Interestingly enough, it was the scenes immediately following both rapes, when Turner is by Cherry's (Aja Naomi King, How to Get Away with Murder) side and when Hark (Colman Domingo, Selma) is consoling Esther (Gabrielle Union, Being Mary Jane), that brought me to tears 2 of the 3 times I cried during the film. Though there was not much character development for Cherry, though there is some, and Esther, and none of the rapes took place on screen, I empathized with both couples as they cried together. I had an emotional connection with their emotions, as opposed to their characters. It is certainly an interesting choice for a film that shows a head that has been blown off and teeth being knocked out of the mouth of a slave we only see once, to choose to not show the rape scene with two characters who at least have names and more than one scene. Heck one of them is the wife of the main character! Why is that? I believe the film purposefully chose not to emotionally tie us down to the experience of the slaves closest to Turner, in order to give us the full experience of an uprising that was much bigger than just Turner's family and friends!
Then there's the spirituality in the film. While there are certainly elements of spirituality that traces back to Africa throughout scenes in the film, Christianity obviously has a large presence. When the wife of his original slaveowner, Elizabeth Turner (Penelope Ann Miller, The Artist) discovers young Nat Turner (Tony Espinosa, Uncle Buck) can read she moves him into the house to teach him. When she sees Turner reaching for a book on the shelf, she stops him and tells him those books are only for White people. She then gives him the one book she says Black people can understand, the Bible. So Turner learns to read and study the Bible. So despite being taken to various plantations to preach on submission, Turner had full exposure to what the entire Bible says. He even points this out in one scene, noting he knows more than just the few pages slaveowners want their slaves to hear and know. And this goes back to the fact that he was not taught to read the Bible to make him a preacher, but rather the Bible was used as a tool to further his ability to read. So he was not spoon-fed particular scriptures, rather he was given full access to the entire Bible.
As the film progressed, and Turner himself was being used as part of the mechanism to use Christianity to make slaves more submissive, I found myself wondering if he would completely turn his back on Christianity. And when he found himself somewhat on the other end of this when he asked his wife who were the men who raped her and she quoted back to him scripture he taught her about vengeance belonging to God, I just knew that was it for him and Christianity. But recall he was aware of the entire Bible, not just the parts used by slaveowners. When Isaiah (Roger Guenveur Smith, Dope) warned him that God is a God of love, Turner replied by saying he is also the God of wrath. In another scene Turner speaks on the scriptures that condemn the way they are treated as slaves. He even references scripture during the uprising, noting people of the Bible like Joshua and David. Such affirmation of Christianity and its nuances is not to be expected in Hollywood. It is not an either/or, as some would like to frame Christianity due to the misuse of it in the enslavement of Black people. Rather, the film shows how Christianity was manipulated and compressed into a small portion of the Bible to condone slavery.
Then there's the symbolism. Cherry's face after being raped made me think of Emmett Till. In a later scene, when she tells Turner they are killing Black people just for being Black, I thought about #BlackLivesMatter. I cried for the third time when I heard Nina Simone singing Strange Fruit as the film showed Black bodies hung from trees. And most striking for the film, Nat Turner's final scenes were clearly symbolic of the crucifixion of Christ. This was not striking merely because of the similarities to the crucifixion of Christ, but more so for what it was saying about the film. In this film depicting a slave narrative, there is no White savior like many other slave films in Hollywood. The savior in The Birth of a Nation is Black!! But if you want to get deep with it, it could also symbolize that the uprising did not die with Nat Turner. His death is only the beginning, we have a choice to live free and continually seek our right to live free or to stay enslaved.
In my opinion, The Birth of a Nation lived up to its initial hype! The acting was great. The cinematography and choices in shots seemed to be well thought out and effective. And though less time was spent on the actual uprising than I expected, the film kept a pretty good pace. Overall, it was a great film, and certainly not just another slave film!
10/10