In the midst of this year’s Oscar controversy, the slave-rebellion epic “The Birth of a Nation” seems poised to prove that if you want to win awards nominations for your film, make a great one.
Writing, directing, producing and starring as Nat Turner, the slave who led a short-lived uprising in 1831 Virginia, Nate Parker picked up the Sundance Film Festival and carried it on his shoulders with “The Birth of a Nation,” a potent and stirring drama about a second American Revolution.
Turner was identified as someone special and taught to read by a kindly white woman (Penelope Ann Miller) whose family owned him, only to be sent back into the cotton fields upon the death of the family patriarch. The heir (Armie Hammer) to the estate, Sam Turner, is seen having a somewhat friendly relationship with Nat that nevertheless leaves no doubt about who rules over whom. Growing up, Nat leverages his early Bible studies into becoming a popular preacher — which gives the slave owners an idea. They take him on tour to preach the Gospel to other slaves, perverting the Bible into an instrument or weapon of oppression.
That audacious device, combined with the even more audacious title — D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “Birth of a Nation” is a paean to the Ku Klux Klan — helps make “The Birth of a Nation” a richer and more complex experience than “12 Years a Slave,” a necessary but somewhat monotone film that made its point, made it again, and made it again.
Parker’s “Nation” is much more structured, veering away from the indie intensity of “12 Years” into more conventional Hollywood territory. A proud, stirring, emotional appeal, it leans toward the style of “Glory,” the 1989 Civil War epic about black troops fighting under the command of a white officer. Painstakingly establishing who Turner was and why he decided to fight the system in which he was complicit, Parker uses arresting images such as a glimpse of two black girls at play, one with a lasso around the other’s neck — to map the anguished landscape of Turner’s soul. As an actor, too, Parker is superb, and the script is first-rate as well. When Turner announces his plan to a disbelieving house slave, the latter says something like “You have killed us all.” Turner says no: He is choosing for the first time to really live.
“The Birth of a Nation” just sold to Fox Searchlight for a record sum of $17.5 million, which gives the film the burden of enormous expectations when it’s released during the Oscar campaigning season late this year. It will fulfill them. This is a film far too powerful and inspiring to be ignored.