Mr. Movie review: Nate Parker’s slave revolt biopic is intense

The Birth of a Nation is based on the true story of the 1831 slave revolt led by Nat Turner. Pluses? Birth of a Nation has lots of them. Nate Parker — who directs, writes and stars — is charismatic, and he’s surrounded by a good supporting cast. Even though his movie crawls in spots, he’s a pretty good writer and director.

Parker plays Turner as a man who has visions and who believes — and whose family and friends believe — is destined to be a great leader. So he’s played as a kind, deeply religious Christian forced to preach the gospel to slaves on plantations other than his own. He’s also a slave, so his sermons are supposed to keep underfed and horribly mistreated slaves in line.

A couple of devastating and every ugly events happen to Turner, and he flips. The rest is history, or at least Parker’s interpretation of history.

Earlier, I italicized the words based and true. Don’t worry, though I am going to be a bit critical of Parker’s film, overall I liked the movie. But criticism of a film in this genre gets tricky. In the past, for so-so reviews of race-oriented movies like Selma, which I didn’t like, and 12 Years a Slave, which I thought was pretty good but not close to a best picture, I was labeled a racist. Writing that Brokeback Mountain was just pretty good got me called a homophobe.

I’m neither.

So I approach my knocks on Parker’s film with trepidation. This movie is about a historical event. My biggest criticism is that while Turner and other slaves were victims of a degrading and unjust system and the rebellion was righteous, Parker paints Turner as a bit nicer than he might have actually been. Or so my limited research says. Considering the social struggle now occurring in this nation, if one is going to do a historical biopic, one ought to endeavor to be as accurate as possible.

And that leads to this: I am a movie critic and I’m reviewing a movie. Doing any kind of criticism is akin to tiptoeing through a minefield. A film review is about acting, directing, storyline, writing, editing, etc. and it is not my place to judge history. This is a well-done, dark, gritty movie about the biggest black eye in this country’s history, even if it didn’t unfold exactly like Parker’s movie says.

This story was originally published October 6, 2016 at 1:10 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie review: Nate Parker’s slave revolt biopic is intense."