Ooooookay... where to begin. If you take one look at the poster for this movie, you'll realize how tricky reviewing this movie is going to be. Sure, it's the first full-length feature film ever made, which makes it a watershed moment in cinema history, but... but...… More
Ooooookay... where to begin. If you take one look at the poster for this movie, you'll realize how tricky reviewing this movie is going to be. Sure, it's the first full-length feature film ever made, which makes it a watershed moment in cinema history, but... but... it's so... damned... RACIST! ... Okay, I have to start from the beginning. Birth of a Nation is the story of two families- the Stonemans from the North and the Camerons from the South- who are great friends with one another. Suddenly- BAM!- the Civil War breaks out, and the two families find themselves on opposite sides. The first half of the film is actually a really good Civil War drama, showing us some of the most important moments in the nation's history (the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the surrender at Appomattox, the assassination of Lincoln) while simultaneously illustrating the toll that war takes on the people on either side (well, mostly the South). But when the war is over and Lincoln is dead, the narrative takes a nasty turn as the abolitionist leader from the North institutes "black rule" in the South, with the intent to "crush the white South under the boot of the black South." And here's where the racism comes in... from here on in, the film is intent on demonizing the freed slaves, portraying them as ignorant, cowardly savages who know nothing of the use of power save how to abuse it. It's hard to say if the portrayals in the film were just blatantly prejudiced, or whether it's an artifact of the acting style of silent films (that is, to overact so the audience understands your intentions), but either way, the freed slaves are shown to be little more than animals- and that "little more" amounts to nothing but duplicitousness and malice. Of course, it isn't saying that ALL African-Americans are bad- on the contrary, two black people help to save the day near the end- just the ones who talk about "equality" and "equal rights," and try to raise themselves up to the white people's level (or drag the white people down to theirs). And in a film so unabashedly racist, full of the worst African-American stereotypes imaginable, who, in the end, becomes our hero? That's right... the KU KLUX KLAN. We are treated to the creation of the Klan, as a reaction to the tyranny of the black masses given power in the South (lead by a "mulatto" who speaks of "his people... building a Black Empire" with himself as king- I swear to God I am not joking), and wouldn't you know it, they're portrayed like nothing less than a roaming band of superheroes- before the Lone Ranger or Zorro graced the screen, there was the KKK! If it wasn't so deeply offensive, I would have been laughing throughout the entire final half-hour. And the last minute or so, depicting a perfect world of peace, or something like that, is like a bad trip- poor composites of a teeming masses (uniformally white, incidentally) dressed in robes and head-dresses, a guy on a horse swinging a sword around, and a full-body shot of... JESUS. Yep- the big J makes a cameo to support Aryan supremacy. That's... just so wrong. Now, while the film is definitely a big prejudiced pile of white-power shite, I will admit that the praise heaped upon the film for its technical mastery is warranted. It makes excellent use of cross-cutting (especially to build suspense during the whole "white girl about to be raped by a black soldier" fiasco) and the framing is sometimes very clever and artfully arranged. And the battles are magnificent; Griffith makes use of a crap-load of extras to create the first truly epic war scenes to ever hit the screen (not to mention the massively populous riot sequence and celebration scenes). But by the same token, the most truly sickening sight I have ever seen in a motion picture has to be a seemingly endless legion of Klansmen riding across the Southern plains, every man garbed in flowing white gowns and wearing faceless hoods, wielding burning crosses and Confederate flags before them. And what's worse- these are our heroes. This is the fucking Cavalry coming to the rescue. And that has to be the most wrenching thing of all in this technically masterful movie: for all its protestations about brotherly love and unity, in the end, the title isn't talking about the United States of America- it's talking about the Confederacy, a nation of white supremacists who keep those uppity black people in line in order to preserve their Aryan birthrights. And as you are probably thinking right now, that... is just evil.
