Movie review: Bloody ‘Birth’ can’t escape controversy surrounding director

“The Birth of a Nation” arrives on screens amongst a whiplash cycle of celebration and backlash. The indie historical epic about the bloody 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner is written, produced and directed by Nate Parker, who also stars in the film. After the Sundance premiere in January, it was snapped up for a record-breaking $17.5 million by Fox Searchlight (no doubt with visions of future little gold men) during the height of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy.

But when Parker’s 2001 Penn State rape trial (in which he was acquitted) resurfaced in the media, attention was directed away from the movie itself and onto Parker’s character. In fairness, the story of “The Birth of a Nation” is born singularly from his vision – with the notable exception of Jean McGianni Celestin, who shares a “story by” credit. Celestin was convicted of rape in the same incident in which Parker was accused. (The conviction was later overturned.)

Can “The Birth of a Nation” withstand the scrutiny? It both can and cannot. Parker is a better actor than writer or director in this particular project. In an emotionally detailed performance, he plays slave preacher Turner with a flinching self-effacement that evolves into horror, sorrow, rage and then possession by the blood of the Holy Spirit. He often grins with an eerie sense of torment behind his mask. But as a director, he’s far too fond of heavy-handed film school symbolism, magical realism and a color palette so desaturated it’s difficult to discern the time of day.

In Parker’s embodiment of Turner, he’s a pious, loving, devoted man, driven to extreme violence by systemic oppression and dehumanization. Parker dutifully walks us through the physical horrors of slavery, presented in the perfunctorily horrifying manner we’re accustomed to. He wields shock value as a weapon against the audience, which is sobering, if not entirely innovative.

What’s troubling in light of their shared past is that Parker and Celestin utilize not one, not two, but three incidents of sexual violence against women as a storytelling device within this imagining of the Turner rebellion. Rape was a dark reality of slavey, but no evidence of it exists in the historical account of Turner’s actions. In this invention, it’s hard not to find a disturbing resonance to Parker’s personal history, especially in a scene of Turner weeping over the violated body of his wife Cherry (Aja Naomi King), vowing revenge after she is gang-raped by a group of white men.

But in this film, rape is not about women, but its effect on men. It’s clearly a convenient way to motivate and justify the mass murder that our hero commits, while maintaining audience allegiance to him. It’s the kind of cheap and easy storytelling that is all-too ubiquitous.

There are many accoutrements that lend the appearance of importance and urgency that are perhaps style over substance – the title appropriated from D.W. Griffith’s racist early cinema epic, the poster of Parker lynched by an American flag, its anachronistic use of Nina Simone’s “Strange Fruit.” Placed under the microscope, “The Birth of a Nation” lacks some originality of thought, but it nonetheless offers the opportunity for necessary discussion as we continue to wrestle with the racist history of this nation and its continuing effects.