[Movie] THE BIRTH OF A NATION

Looks great! I love watching movies with historical settings. It's always cool to put yourself in that time.

 

Personally that's not how I would describe this movie (although obviously I haven't seen it) It was worth watching but really really hard to watch 12 Years a Slave. And if I ever watch it again it will be at least 10 years or more.

 

Yeah, when I first heard about this movie I was like, yep won't be any #OscarSoWhite next year. But the more I've heard about it, I wonder if it's going to be too difficult/hard to watch/controversial to get enough support. 12 Years a Slave may be mild compared to this. It also got kind of middle of the road reviews: http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-birth-of-a-nation

 

It's an incredibly sad yet fascinating time in American history. Hard to watch. That trailer looks great.

If somebody really wanted to make a terribly realistic movie about the fringes of the Civil War, all you have to do is look at the "Bloody Kansas" vs. Missouri border wars. Horrifying stuff.

 

Looks great. Nate Parker should have been a bigger actor by now.

I'm so tired of Struggle Films though.

 

So is this a remake or some sort of antithesis version of the original Birth of a Nation (a controversial and virulently racist film about the KKK from 1915?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation

EDIT: Wikipedia with the answer:

The 2016 film uses the same title as "the title of D.W. Griffith's 1915 KKK propaganda film in a very purposeful way", said The Hollywood Reporter.[4] Nate Parker said his film had the same title "ironically, but very much by design".[5] He told the magazine Filmmaker, "Griffith's film relied heavily on racist propaganda to evoke fear and desperation as a tool to solidify white supremacy as the lifeblood of American sustenance. Not only did this film motivate the massive resurgence of the terror group the Ku Klux Klan and the carnage exacted against people of African descent, it served as the foundation of the film industry we know today. I've reclaimed this title and re-purposed it as a tool to challenge racism and white supremacy in America, to inspire a riotous disposition toward any and all injustice in this country (and abroad) and to promote the kind of honest confrontation that will galvanize our society toward healing and sustained systemic change.

 

When I saw the thread title, who the OP was and his comments, my head exploded.

 

Yea I just mean the time is so interesting to study. It was a huge/disappointing time in ours country's history. It's definitely hard to watch some time but it was also reality. Those people lived it.

 

Yeah, the thread title made me immediately think, "Wow, Hollywood really will remake anything."

 

For some reason I've been thinking this movie was about the Haitian Rebellion. The older I get the more pissed these movies make me. Still looking forward to seeing it though.

If my grandparents' grandparents lived through it, then the least I can do is take in a harsh reminder of how far we've come less than five generations removed.

 

I remember reading a book in college about Nat Turner's Rebellion, it's brutal stuff, I'm looking forward to seeing the movie but it's going to be a tough experience....

 

Will watch it at home so I can see it in bits and pieces. Too depressing to watch in a single sit down.

 

Looks good, but I already know I'm going to be sad as hell after watching it

 

All caps

 

Yeah, I tried to watch it, but it takes a lot out of me to watch these struggle pieces.

I tried to watch Underground because I like that guy from Leverage and Jurnee Smollett, but I stopped after the 1st episode.

 

It helps the blind.

 

Penn St alumni who's rapey. Shocked.

 

This film doesn't look controversial at all to me. It has a clear hero and villain which is well established in this type of movie. Sure you have scenes of how brutal the plantation mentality was, the white girl leading the black girl around with a noose (but "playing"), can be jarring, but not a shock to one's system.

I've yet to see any movie really tackle slavery in a more subtle but varied way: for example: Ellison once said that all black people are part white and all white people are part black, and until we tackle that, we always we mired in pettiness. (I'm paraphrasing this).
These movies tackle slavery from a very surface level: basically, all of these type of movies really want to focus on the brutality of it and never get into the grayer areas of it.