Amph The Birth of a Nation

I'll write what I wrote on facebook:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4196450/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

The voting patterns for this as of yet to be widely released movie are...concerning. With 25% of voters giving it a 1/10, which is an unreasonably high percentage of people giving this an unreasonably low rating, you can't help but feel it's probably racists.

 

That, or Internet do-gooders that think they're down voting a remake of the 1915 movie but didn't have the time to read the description. Probably both, because people are dumb.

 

I am looking forward to this film.

EDIT: The really sad thing is that I was originally coming to post about how stupid someone would have to be to think you could remake DW Griffith's film, given its content. Then, though, I thought about the current political rhetoric.

 

pretty cool

 

Oh, that looks so good. Nate Parker is one of those actors that I had kind of decided was just going to spend his entire career being absolutely brilliant and also overlooked and I'm really glad that he's got this film made and that it seems to be building up some steam. I first really noticed him in Ain't Them Bodies Saints; small supporting role, but so, so good. And his performance here looks like it's going to be great. Writing-directing-starring; man, I really hope this movie hits big.

 

can't wait to see it

 

Adorably the 1/10 ratinga accuse the film of racism. Nawwwww.

Doesn't look like this is getting a release in Australia though. Not unusual - history for us has always been a British thing (so, South Africa, the Empire etc) so US history doesn't really have traction.

Regardless I would like to see the film.

 

Please tell me this will get a wide release by the summer. Or wide-ish. Or just so I can see the damn thing in some format before December.

Definitely want to see it just cuz of the buzz but haven't watched the trailer. I wanna go in fresh!

 

I've heard buzz about this one and want to see it, but these smaller and independent releases take a few weeks to a month to reach my city.

That said, DW Griffith's film was (and still is) quite well done from a technical and film making perspective. From what I know, a lot of film schools all but require students to see the film for historical and technical reasons. I recall it once being on Netflix, but a lot of viewers gave it poor reviews due to the content while ignoring the historical value of the film.

 

Not unusual for films of this size to not have a distributor in Australia this far out from realise. Depending on the reception it probably will get a release, albeit limitedly.

 

I love how the title of the film is a nice spin on the Griffith film. This is a powerful part of history that hasn't been explored throughly in film(like many,many areas of the early republican era).

How many people here have ever watched the Griffith film in its entirety?

 

I've seen it twice, this looks a lot better.

Honestly IMO the Griffith Birth of a Nation gets talked up a lot. It was important to the development of the medium in its day, but the actual innovations it presented are so technical you're often getting misinformation about what, exactly, it pioneered (there's a popular misconception, for example, that it was the first feature length film). It's also often trumpeted at the expense of its peers in world and minority cinema, D. W. Griffith's other films (nobody talks about Judith of Bethulia's pioneering take on sexuality in American cinema for some reason), his big studio contemporaries' films (*Cough* Cecil B. DeMille's myriad lighting innovations and codification of important Western genre conventions in the 1914 version of The Squaw Man *Cough cough*), and basically... everything. It's also kind of slow, honestly, the pacing isn't even that great by silent film standards. My usual recommendation is "If you see just one historically significant black and white movie about the unapologetic glorification of a hate group... see Triumph of the Will."

 

Yeah I watched it twice, years apart, too(about 15 years). It didn't improve on second viewing. It's really most important for the time period it was shot and what that represented for a segregationist South rather than as a great film in its own right. And you're right it overshadows the rest of Griffith's filmography. Intolerance is another forgotten movie of his that gets lost in the hype of BOAN.

 

Superb cinematography at the very least.

Will have to watch this film.

 

I saw it back when I was at university - we watched Intolerance as part of the course, I can't remember if we saw BOAN in a tutorial, or if I watched it at home while doing an essay.

It's an important film, not only for its various technical innovations, but the evolution of film syntax itself, in terms of telling a longer story. It's quite difficult to appreciate such things a century later, when we take them for granted, but it was a massive step forward from the more typical shorts of the time. It wasn't the first feature-length film, but it was the one of the first to be able to genuinely sustain itself over a longer running duration. If you look at what came earlier, it's noticeably more sophisticated in every respect.

However, it is, and was, a shockingly racist piece of work, a twisted portrayal of history in favour of the segregationist South and the Ku Klux Klan, FFS, and received well-deserved criticism for it at the time. For anyone perhaps wondering if its content is merely a matter of context, it's not in the same league as other classic films like Gone With the Wind which often come under fire for racist content that was somewhat accepted at the time, and has to be grudgingly tolerated in the light of their merits - it's practically a recruitment film for white supremacists to slap on a white hood and hunt down all them coloureds who've got the homes, wives and daughters of decent white folk in their filthy sights.
BOAN portrays the post-Civil War history of the South as a nightmarish period when the decent folk of the South were under the thumb of fried-chicken-chomping Negroes and corrupt Yankees, with decent white women threatened with rape behind every corner from lustful black men (played by white actors in blackface).



The saviours, of course, are the KKK, who triumph over these evil forces in scenes straight out of LOTR or Braveheart - while wearing those notorious white hoods.







Disgusting and rather moronic stuff, but still an important part of cinema history.

 

Great stuff Darth_Nub. Another note about the public reception of Birth of a Nation: The filmmakers were invited to the White House for a private screening with President Wilson.

 

This will be a sad movie since the rebellion is futile. They don't have the power to free the slaves and more slaves are murdered in retaliation. I wonder if they will make the movie more....black and white...then the real life version as we'll. Because the real rebellion had the "he who fights monsters......" influence some of the rebels. They murdered all the whites they encountered, not just the men that owned slaves but non slave owners including women and children.

 

Are you asking if they will show Turner's rebellion killing women and children as well as slave owning white masters? I don't see why they wouldn't. Showing the tragic and brutal nature of the short-lived uprising would give depth to the real consequences of slavery.

 

Im just wondering how graphic they would be. Real life they often used melee weapons. So seeing a child being chopped up would be pretty horrible.

If they are going to go for historical realism then your right, this movie should show the consequences of slavery. This could be done by presenting its corruption. Not just on the souls of whites (making them cold and easier to show evil) but how it can corrupt the souls of some of blacks as well. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Men throughout history have done evil in the name of good. Whites often felt slavery was moral even though it wasn't. Nat Turner feels his actions he takes against whites are moral....even though they aren't. Both sides in this story use religion to justify their dark deeds.

 

Yep.

 

Erm. They were trapped inside a literal police state whose whole existence and energy was directed against them. If there is any justification for collective use of force, this has to be very close to being it. Especially since, as we know, women and children were active in owning slaves and participating in abuses against them. The "innocence" angle isn't so much valid, in that case.

 

Yep because it is so right to chop up a child just because of the color of her skin....and the fact that her father is a slave owner.

And I don't think they were going around and coming across whites and saying......"do you own slaves?" before deciding whether to kill them or not. They massacred people because they were white. Some did own slaves....but not all of them.

Yes some women and children did own slaves....doesn't mean all the victims of the massacre were slave owners.

As it is wrong for a white man to butcher a bunch of black children, it is wrong vice versa.

Monsters existing isn't a valid excuse for the opposer to become a monster himself.

 

He actually is reported to have spared some whites because they were poor and uninvolved. But please go ahead. Your ham-fisted morality tale is better.

 

"Yes, yes, there was a system in place which literally enslaved human beings, sold them like cattle, tortured and abused them, broke up their families, but let's only overly scrutinize the actions of enslaved who fought back!"