Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Console best movie i've ever seen.

hubproject I found this a really good film that entertained me throughout. I won't get all dramatic like some that lie to review however it was good and I don't need to say anymore. I usually love this kind of film so it was a no brainier for me. I have watched it once on my own and once with my family enjoying the experience both times. I would truly recommend this film.

sddavis63 Aside from the Nat Turner rebellion, most slave revolts in America have been largely forgotten - in spite of the fact that the largest slave revolt in US history took place in Louisiana 20 years BEFORE the Turner rebellion. "The Birth Of A Nation" offers us director, writer and star Nate Parker's perspective on the Turner rebellion. The movie receives a lot of negative comments which are probably based primarily on Parker's own controversial past. (He was accused of sexual assault while this movie was in production.) It's also possible that there's a segment of whites who have difficulty confronting the subject matter. I found this an engrossing movie that built well to its climax and in the end was moving and inspirational. The movie isn't without it's flaws but it provides a sobering perspective on slavery in the American south.That in itself, mind you, might be the movie's biggest flaw. The sobering perspective it provides is just another sobering perspective. It doesn't really offer anything fresh about the treatment of slaves in the south, simply reminding us that slavery was a brutal institution that dehumanized an entire race of people. There are some historical issues with the movie. First is the scene depicting the brutal rape of Turner's wife Cherry - which seems to have been invented by Parker for the film and becomes what you might call "the last straw" leading Turner into rebellion. But there's no evidence that it ever happened. I also thought that Parker softened the blow of the rebellion itself, perhaps to make Turner seem more noble? It was a bloody revolt that deliberately targeted white women and children and not just the men who owned the plantations and the slaves - but we didn't see much of the slaughter of the women and children. Turner's capture toward the end of the movie held Turner up as a model rather than offering the truth. In the movie Turner seems to hold his head high as he gives himself up. The truth is that he hid in the woods for a couple of months until he was discovered hiding in a hole in the ground by a white farmer. Parker clearly had an agenda here - to turn Turner into more of a hero than he was. The film also doesn't offer much analysis of the impact of the revolt. Was it successful? It's hard to say how to measure the success of such a revolt. No slaves were freed by it, and in the immediate aftermath of the revolt literally hundreds of blacks - slave and free - were murdered, and many laws were enacted that oppressed blacks even more than they already were. Little of that gets mentioned at any length. So the movie has its issues. However, I personally thought that the movie overcame those problems. In the basic flow of the story, the history was accurate enough, although the movie chose to have Turner remain the property of Samuel Turner up until the rebellion, whereas he had actually bounced around a fair bit. Perhaps that decision was made so that Samuel would be a sort of composite character representing all slave owners - but it creates a historical problem when Nat kills Samuel at the beginning of the rebellion since Samuel had died several years before the revolt. Turner was a preacher - taught to read and familiar with the Bible - and he definitely believed himself to be called by God for a greater purpose. That is a recurring theme in the movie: that Turner believed himself to be God's instrument, and the ultimate revolt to be God's vengeance against the white oppressors. In that, it points out that religion can be used to promote violence and killing as well as love and peace. I suppose it also raises the question of whether such violence and killing is sometimes justified - which are actually very relevant questions in today's world, where religious-inspired violence is becoming commonplace. In the movie, Turner helps an indebted Samuel save his plantation by being rented out to other whites to preach submission to their slaves, carefully selecting only "approved" verses from the Bible to justify slavery but is shown to become increasingly uncomfortable as he becomes more aware of Bible verses that condemn slavery and seem to justify violent rebellion against oppression.The movie depicts a lot of violence. There's rape, there's beatings, Turner himself is mercilessly whipped when he's believed to have become too "uppitty" in his preaching, for lack of a better word. The actual rebellion – while softened in its brutality - is still shown to be a violent and bloody one. Parker's performance as Nat Turner was extremely good. He's been criticized by some for (as the director and writer) placing too much of the focus on his own character, but that strikes me as a ridiculous criticism. The revolt is probably the most famous slave revolt in American history and it's remembered as the Nat Turner Revolt. How you could tell the story of the Nat Turner Revolt without focusing heavily on Nat Turner is beyond me. I also liked Aja Naomi King's performance as Cherry. The title is intriguing. "The Birth Of A Nation" seems to deliberately reference D.W. Griffith's 1915 "Birth Of A Nation" - which presented a very different story, steeped in racism and a defence of the Ku Klax Klan, which was just beginning to reorganize as that early movie was released. I'm not sure the point that was being made in taking the name - but it's obvious that there was a point.I think this movie does overcome its weaknesses and offers us a glimpse of some of the issues that confronted the past and that, in some ways, are still confronting the present. (8/10)

SnoopyStyle Nat Turner (Nate Parker) grew up a slave in Virginia. It was better than most slaves and he was taught to read the bible by Elizabeth Turner. His father ran away after killing a slave catcher. Raymond Cobb (Jackie Earle Haley) is one of those evil slave catchers. With fears of a slave revolt, Reverend Walthall suggests that the debt-ridden drunk Samuel Turner (Armie Hammer) hire out Nat's preaching to soothe other restless plantations. Nat talks Samuel into buying and saving Cherry-Ann. Nat witnesses and experiences countless injustices. When he dares to baptize a white man, he is whipped. Finally, he organizes a slave revolt.This is competently made. It is sincere but it doesn't have that extra something to put it over the top. Nate Parker is a good actor but Nat Turner is a passive character for the first half of the movie. He could have made more with the religious aspect. That would be a different angle to get at this subject matter. Whatever it is, the movie needs a new spin to angle this shot.

logcabnnut The movie was just "ok". Pretty much what I expected in a "slave movie"- brutal whippings, white males raping at will, and a lot of turning a blind-eye rationalizations by the "good ol white folk." What's "typical" is the response from certain reviewers (read:white) who seem hung up on Nat Turner's actions rather than the REASON why he acted the way he did. These reviewers are aghast that the real rebellion resulted in the deaths of "innocent" white women and children of slave holding families YET they conveniently sidestep the feelings of a slave having known that 'massah' and any other white male could sexually denigrate his wife, sister, mother, or preteen child at any time. It's almost like white males are supposed to be "entitled" to do whatever they felt and if someone who is impacted "reacts"- like Nat Turner- then that person is at fault. In real life Nat Turner may have killed white women and children in the rebellion but these same "so-called innocent" white people didn't have any heartburn over the inhumane brutality suffered ad nauseam by black women and children. Based on many reviews seems like the same savage primitive attitudes of many whites haven't changed in the past 185+ years since the events of this movie.