Hello, moviegoers! Since my reputation is at an all time low and I cannot ruin it any
further, I have decided to post a review of the naziest of the naziest films. A film
more Nazi than Triumph of the Will. A fill so Nazi, that it was Nazi before Nazi was a
thing.
That's right: I am talking about The Birth of a Nation, the most explosive blockbuster
of the silent film era.
The Birth of a Nation is an epic about the American Civil War, which follows the
events from the point of view of a Southern family (the Camerons) and a Northern
family (the Stonemans). It is divided in two parts.
The first one is a by the book war drama. We can see the friendship within people in
the North and the South stretched by the war, Historical battles, and the eventual
capitulation by General Lee and Lincoln's demise in the hands of Booth. It would be
more impactful if we hadn't seen this a hundred times already, but hey, when this film
was released, it was groundbreaking.
The best thing the first part has to offer is paving the way for the second part,
which for me, is where the actual juice of this film resides.
The second segment deals with the reconstruction of the South after being crushed.
This recoustruction, according to the film, is burdened by radical politicians who
want to give them niggars equal rights to whites. To this effect, radicals rig elections, institute black judges and black juries to drive cases involving whites,
and use fear to keep Southern whites under control. It is in this climate that a
second rebellion shakes the South, as the townfolks create a new weapon to bring back
justice and end the tyranny of the blacks: the Ku Klux Klan!
Wait, throw no tomato at me until I am finished with the review, please.
As you can see, The Birth of a Nation does not attempt to conceal in the least its
opinion regarding inter-racial marriage, equal rights and universal voting. The very
first intertitle just after the credits and the plackard that reads that the film is
not aimed at creating controversy reads "The seed of disunion was planted when the
first Negro reached America". Seriously, next time a member of the Woke Brigade tells
you that a book is not inclusive because it lacks Queer characters, show him this
film. His eyes will pop out of his sockets.
Most amusing is that, when you ignore the blatant racism that soaks every inch of this
film, the movie is actually quite good, because it touches subjects that are somehow
actual. Particularly, you can see politicians playing the population and using thugs
to impose their law, to the point that normal people is forced to organize outside of
the law if they want any resemblance of justice. This movie uses Negroes as the unwitting enforcers of the evil politicians, but the script could be adapted to nearly
any region of the world were there is political violence and State Terrorism.
As many films of this era, The Birth of a Nation suffers from issues with its pacing.
Sometimes, Griffin lets the scenes roll for a tad longer after the point he wanted to
transmit had been made. At other times, impotant details are delivered a bit too
quickly.
This is the first attempt at creating an Epic that I know to have achieved a reasonable degree of artistical success. Some of the big battles actually look big.
Other battles are made in such a way that it takes some effort to learn what the heck
is going on. Certainly, Epic battles and special effects were a selling point for this
film back in the day, but that is not where its main strengths reside, in my opinion.
Again, as with many films from this era, the strength resides in the actors, photography and characterization. Heroes look heroic, villians look villianous. If you
pay attention you can see a lot of background details happening behind the main action
in each take. For example, the main characters might be talking in a field hospital,
but if you peek to the background, you will see some secondary drama happening with a
no-name patient.
The Birth of a Nation is definitively one every movie buff must watch if he ever wants
to be taken seriously. It is not for everybody, and the sort of people who places
other people in Twit lists just because they say stuff they don't want to hear will
have their brain torn asunder by a nazism overdose. People who can look past the KKK
propaganda might extract a lot of value out of this film.
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