History favours the brave, but like any form of art, it is also about perception | The problems that The Birth of a Nation has are ones that exist in it's director's overbearing ego and overwhelming goal to bring something powerful to the table |
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Quite frankly, there is a lot wrong with the film | SING TO HIM A NEW SONG! Set against the antebellum South, THE BIRTH OF A NATION follows Nat Turner Nate Parker , a literate slave and preacher, whose financially strained owner, Samuel Turner Armie Hammer , accepts an offer to use Nat's preaching to subdue unruly slaves |
Sing praise in assembly of the righteous.
The sound design, at least on the Sundance version that I saw, was very flat and felt a bit too post-production sounding | |
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And punishment on those peoples! SING TO HIM A NEW SONG! Between the way Parker conveys his violence and the way he immortalizes Nat Turner by making him more of a saint than he ought to be, the film gradually feels less and less genuine as the running time winds down | With collateral damage on both sides, history has all but condemned Nat Turner as a mass murderer, much like what English history says about Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace |
Let the high praise of God be on the mouths of the saints and a two-edged sword in their hand to execute vengeance on the demonic nations! Most of all, this film functions as a cinematic memorial to one of the first freedom fighters that would eventually give rise to the American Civil Rights Movement.
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