I thought this was okay. The material is there for a great movie but the execution felt off. Nate Parker's performance is one of the highlights of the film but ironically the direction is the weakest part of the movie. Moments that are meant to be powerful sometimes fall flat.

In my opinion this shouldn't even be in the running to be an Oscar frontrunner but we'll see.

This movie sucks a lot. I agree it shouldn't even be in the Oscar conversation. The only performance that even registered for me was Aja Naomi King.

Why was it soo loved at Sundance??
Can't wait to see it for myself

#OscarsSoWhite was just coming into focus.

The movie has a few admittedly strong sequences but on the whole is just a mess narratively and is overly preachy and cheesy - the writing comes off like a second-rate Braveheart ripoff and while I can see some finding the very end effective I found it ludicrous. It's like a paint-by-the-numbers book of "how to get Oscar nominations" and Parker is not a strong enough director to carry this movie all the way through. The religious imagery is overkill and even the scenes that are supposed to be gut-wrenching lack effectiveness (case in point Gabrielle Union's entire two scene dialogue-free arc). It can't decide whether it wants to be this serious slavery drama or a rousing and crowd-pleasing American war epic, and unfortunately it all adds up to a dull experience overall. Nate Parker has been surrounded by controversy over the past few months and while I've liked him as an actor before (he was good in the incredibly underrated Beyond The Lights) it's next to impossible to separate him as Nat Turner from his vile interviews he's been giving to the press as of late. Also I personally found his performance over the top as the movie is obsessed with these incredibly dramatic closeups to show him emoting. Armie Hammer didn't work for me either, but it's mostly due to the writing having no idea what to do with his character. The strongest performances in the movie come from Aja Naomi King and Aunjanue Ellis, though both aren't really given a ton to do beyond serving as Turner's support system. Almost everything about this movie left me cold - it's hokey and artificial in every way that 12 Years A Slave was lyrical and haunting. It is hilarious to think that once Oscar hopes were pegged on this movie when in reality it doesn't deserve a single nomination. C/C-

^ racist

No, I just have taste

People felt like they had to love it. After the controversy with Nate Parker people didn't feel the pressure to praise it. Hence the RT score dropping more and more since then. I guarantee if none of this had happened with Parker this would be close to 100% on RT.

The Birth of a Nation is an imperfect, but arresting and poignant dramatization of Nat Turner's slave rebellion, a two-day Virginia revolt which transpired 30 years before the Civil War and resulted in the death of around sixty white people. It is an important American story, resonant and violent, and it is treated with intelligence and taste by Nate Parker, who plays Turner while also serving as writer, director (for the first time), and co-producer. His performance is dignified, often sonorous, and, when called upon, volatile, and his straightforward screenplay satisfactorily illuminates various parts of the true story, from Turner's intense religious conviction to the rhythms and traditions of 19th-century plantation life. The film infrequently betrays its star's directorial inexperience—an underdeveloped supporting character here, a piece of overwrought symbolic imagery there—but, in general, it is an honorable, sound, and tough portrait of a singular and complicated historical figure.

B+

I will say this re: Parker's controversial history. One notices, perhaps more than they would otherwise, the rape-and-revenge elements in the story. Gabrielle Union's "character" is there to jubilantly wed and then be raped. I am not sure she ever says an actual line of dialogue. The film heavily emphasizes the enslaved men's emasculation and hopelessness as "their" women are preyed upon and molested. Of course, this is certainly a viable vein of tension for a slavery-themed drama.

She has no lines.

It's no 12 Years A Slave, but this is a solid film IMO. I thought Nate Parker did a good job acting and directing eventhough he does gloss over some things. It definitely had some powerful moments, but they are few and far in between. I also didn't have a problem with Armie Hammer in this, although I do wish Jackie Earle Haley was given a more significant role.

The Birth of a Nation

With 12 Years a Slave, Django Unchained, and even Free State of Jones in recent years, and add into the mix that The Birth of a Nation is made by a black director, the first 80-minutes feels unneeded, biased, and, quite frankly, boring. Black people are presented as simple, honest, reliable, hard-working, good people. The whites, quite unsurprisingly are cruel, mean-spirited, rapists (which becomes hilarious considering Nate Parker's own past). Even the one good white man (Armie Hammer) is turned into a villain! The film felt too heavily weighted in the direction of one man's mission to do his ancestors justice. Nathaniel's wife, Cherry, said "they're killing people everywhere for no reason but being black". Sure, many Africans died in those times for no reason but being black, but let's get the reason right this time. They were killing people to force a serial killer (one with pearly white teeth, I hasten to add) to turn himself in. Anyway, despite this, the film-making was bog-standard. Score not particularly moving. Cinematography not particularly well-captured. And the acting not particularly memorable. So, unfortunately, my Armie Hammer double-bill (I saw Nocturnal Animals before) hasn't been great. I'm bored of guilt-laden, slave melodrama.

D

The Birth of a Nation left me pretty cold. I tempered expectations after a not great reception on this board, but straight from the get go the film feels more like a B-film production than a full fledged one. Jackie Earle Haley is good and Armie Hammer plays a fine role too, but the film succumbs by other just average supporting roles while Nate Parker shows to me he's not able to carry a film either. I can believe there's a good story in here, but it's screenplay feels amateurish and the slave events feel more like isolated attempts to depict its time while the main event seems very sluggishly finished. For a film about the Nat Turner slave revolt the film is about that for only a very short time I felt. So that all sounds mostly negative, but it's not a bad film as I found the story interesting and it kept my interest to where it would all lead too. I appreciate the insight it provided in the life of that time, but it could have been told in a much better way I felt. It's score is fitting too and while the sets itself look great, it's cinematography is nothing special either. Lastly, they might have wanted to make us understand Nat's motivations more by introducing the spiritual thoughts he had, these parts didn't work for me either. If they stuck more to true events and less to fiction (which might be hard since not a lot of data can be found about that time), this could have been a much better film. Also found it a bit of a cop-out to not show anything of the rape of Nat's wife. It could have provided for a film-defining scene.

C