Powerful historical drama 'Birth of a Nation' courts controversies

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So many controversies surround the historical drama A Birth of a Nation that the title is the least of them. Director/screenwriter/star Nate Parker gave his Nat Turner biopic the same name as 1915’s A Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith’s stylistically groundbreaking, notoriously racist period piece that makes heroes of the Ku Klux Klan.

In appropriating the title for his film about Nat Turner and his 1831 slave uprising, Parker clearly seeks to point out the tensions between America’s identity and its history of oppressed people defying their abusers. A powerful film with some conspicuous limitations, A Birth of a Nation will spark intense conversations, but not necessarily the ones Parker intends.

Played by Tony Espinosa as a boy and then Parker as an adult, Nat Turner grows up on a Virginia plantation with relatively mild treatment: the materfamilias (Penelope Ann Miller) encourages Nat to read, preach the Gospel and play with her son, Sam. Grown-up Nat delivers sermons to the other slaves and has a tense but close relationship to Sam (Armie Hammer). When Nat sees a traumatized young woman called Cherry (Aja Naomi King) about to be auctioned off to white brutes, Nat convinces Sam to buy her and place her in a safer situation. Parker and King give terrific performances as they play out a wary romance, despite living as chattel.

The early scenes catalog the sickening abuses and humiliations of life in bondage. Atlanta actor Jayson Warner Smith plays a slave driver who metes out some genuinely horrifying punishments. Earlier this year we saw media figures arguing that the slaves who built the White House didn’t have it so bad, suggesting that films like The Birth of a Nation will never be irrelevant.

The plot gains momentum when Sam, struggling with financial problems and alcoholism, begins renting Nat out to preach on other plantations; having one slave tell others to submit in the name of salvation will supposedly help defuse potential unrest. Instead, the tour serves to radicalize Nat and introduces him to a network of more slaves ready to rebel. When Cherry suffers a horrific (off-camera) rape, Nat prepares to take up arms.

In The Birth of a Nation, Parker explores Nat’s spirituality in such a hellish situation. The first scene shows young Nat experience a secret African coming-of-age ceremony, and throughout he sees visions that draw on both Christian and African traditions, as if he’s in touch with more than one deity. When Nat uses scripture to justify insurrection, he ingeniously turns education and religion against the slavers.

Nevertheless, his religious awakening takes a backseat to the film’s revenge-story elements. Parker does an effective job of building up villains like Jackie Earle Haley’s repellent slave hunter, priming the audience to see the African characters exact bloody reprisals. But it’s hard to ignore that Parker is a first-time filmmaker working on a limited budget. For every scene of tender affection or charged confrontation, there are others that are stilted and awkward, akin to the historical reenactments you see in TV documentaries. The Birth of a Nation feels more workmanlike compared to 2013’s vivid, wrenching 12 Years a Slave.

In the two years since that film’s multiple Oscar wins, the Academy has nominated no actors of color, and the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite serves as shorthand to critique Hollywood’s racial blind spots. When The Birth of a Nation made its debut at Sundance earlier this year, Fox Searchlight bought the rights for $17.5 million — a record for the film festival.

But The Birth of a Nation’s Oscar chances may have exploded with the emergence of reporting about the filmmaker’s past, specifically that in 1999, Parker and Jean McGianni Celestin (with whom Parker shares story credit for Nation) were accused of rape. Parker was acquitted in 2001, while Celestin was found guilty of sexual assault, but saw the conviction subsequently overturned. The accuser committed suicide in 2012.

Consequently, it’s almost impossible to separate the film from its controversies — if even it should be. This review can’t parse the questions of Parker’s innocence, or whether the film’s treatment of rape is admirable or hypocritical. The Birth of a Nation serves as an uneven but angry rebuke to the racism at America’s roots — a weaker film would be easier to dismiss outright.

The Birth of a Nation. ★★★☆☆. Directed by Nate Parker. Stars Nate Parker, Aja Naomi King. Rated R. Opens Fri., Oct. 7. At area theaters.