The Birth of a Nation

Nate Parker’s lightning-rod account of slave-turned-revolutionary Nat Turner arrives in the opposite of a vacuum: The long path to release has been so clouded by expectation, controversy, and extracurricular noise that it’s almost strange to be reminded that there is, in fact, an actual movie at the center of it all.

3099d ago

The Birth Of A Nation is a powerful, imperfect history lesson.

3099d ago

Debuting writer-director Nate Parker stars in this searingly impressive account of the Nat Turner slave rebellion.

3099d ago

In ending on a single, hopeful transition towards progress, Nate Parker’s debut is fiery cry to end the systemic injustice that still plagues our country and beyond.

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It’s part of the strength of Parker’s film that the current controversy doesn’t entirely overshadow its impact — and that Birth of a Nation immediately becomes part of another crucial conversation, about race.

3099d ago

There are images, however, in The Birth of a Nation that are so potent, disturbing, and visually precise that they will be seared into my memory for life.

3099d ago

Nate Parker directs and stars in a biopic of Nat Turner, who led an early 19th century slave revolt.

3099d ago

The movie, uneven as it is, has terrific momentum and passages of concentrated visual beauty. The acting is strong even when the script wanders into thickets of rhetoric and mystification. And despite its efforts to simplify and italicize the story, it’s admirably difficult, raising thorny questions about ends and means, justice and mercy, and the legacy of racism that lies at the root of our national identity.

3099d ago

Nate Parker's awards-bait spectacle is familiar, but necessary.

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Though controversy swirls around its director-star, this flawed, fiery depiction of Nat Turner-led slave insurrection remains a notable achievement.

3099d ago

The Birth of a Nation is a flawed but fairly compelling chapter of the American story that powerfully resonates with how that story is playing out today.

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Nate Parker's powerful, problematic film about Nat Turner.

3099d ago

Should this Birth of a Nation exist? Should people see it? Is it O.K. if people respond to it? If we care at all about who, beyond white guys, ought to be making movies in America, the answer to all is yes. It’s the difference between stepping through an open door or standing off bullishly to the side, wishing someone else had opened it.

3099d ago

Turner absolves the man that nobody else will, and the writer/director/actor doesn't bother to dramatize why. That's how tricky and personal forgiveness is — even Nate Parker can't wrap his head around it.

3099d ago

With a provocative title and a timely focus on America’s history of slavery, this is Sundance’s most talked-about film. If only it were less heavy-handed.

3099d ago

Nate Parker directs and stars in a film, surrounded by controversy, about Nat Turner and his 1831 rebellion.

3099d ago

Nate Parker strains to control the strange and stirring complications of his subject’s visionary apocalypticism.

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Nate Parker's “The Birth of a Nation,” a retelling of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner, could not be more timely.

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The Birth Of A Nation is not without inherent power, but Parker struggles to evoke anything besides surface tellings of textbook atrocities.

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