The Birth of a Nation

I remember an episode of a cartoon that's helped me with some of my stories: OK KO. It's a cartoon about superheroes who all work in a plaza, and one kid who works in a bodega there. KO and his friend Dende, a kappa girl, find that POW cards, a series of trading cards with official heroes and power levels on them, do not include kappas because of an old stereotype involving a myth about kappas eating people. This leads them to nearly throw all their POW cards away, but they struggle with it because POW cards are how they united as friends. They change their goal to changing the POW card company to teach them why the action is wrong as opposed to just throwing the cards away and letting the evil continue. They decided to "embrace the good while acknowledging the bad."

In a way, this is what critics do everyday, but the real challenge is a personal one: separating the art from the artist. This is what happens when morality becomes a leading factor. In some cases, the overall message is the evil that leads people to even ignore good filmmaking quality. Because this notion is often portrayed by radical reviewers who keep things black-and-white with no regard for the complexity of the world as detailed by live itself (and even Donnie Darko's speech), I feel that this attempt at "punishing" something defeats honesty and the purpose of right and wrong overall. The next excuse is often "enjoyment being defeated by the morality," but this still relies on an overpowering of a person's "feelings." In other words, it's discrimination. So in a total irony, I'm going to review one of the most controversial films in history, one that is often discriminated for its message, which, ironically, is something I just spoke against: discrimination.


A part of me can't believe I watched this movie. It might have something to do with the movie's strange history, or maybe it's the fact that it's a three-hour silent movie with in-the-know rep in general, or maybe it has something to do with the confidence I feel at this point in my life to judge this movie properly. I haven't really felt this way since I first saw Abel Gance's Napoleon. Or maybe it's because I never really decided to watch something pro-KKK or anything like that before. I always knew I'd judge it for the technicality as well as the message, but still, I've never made this decision before. Nevertheless, I'd review it as fairly as I do anything else.

A man from the North and a women from the South fall in love during the late stages of the Civil War, and it's not long before Abraham Lincoln is shot. With the South now in economic turmoil, and some angry African-Americans wanting to push white men out of power, it's not long before the brother of our Southern lady, Ben, declares war on the free black men of the South by forming the Ku Klux Clan.

I suppose one must get this out of the way as soon as possible, especially if you don't know yet. The movie's pro-white supremacy. And it paints a bad picture for modern Southerners, especially conservatives. The one who actually taught me that racism existed and agreed that it was one of the stupidest things on Earth was a Southern conservative: my father. And lemme tell you, he never would've let me watch this, even for a film class. And this is the same man who recommended Bicycle Thieves to me when I asked him about his choices for the greatest movies ever.

You wants some examples on its supremacy? Well, first and foremost, even though the Klan doesn't really show up until the third act, the KKK is seen as a heroic force throughout its screen time. I mean, the whole save-the-damsel thing kind of cemented it. And the intertitles often have some nice words to say about them. On top of that, the intertitles throw in a negative phrasing or two concerning the Radical Republicans who wanted to punish the South. The other great example of this bull is how African-Americans are depicted as, and as an autistic man I'm being kind, special. They walk around like they don't know anything, and yet their economy relied on them knowing how to do these jobs.

And number 3: white men in blackface because there's no way they could get that many black people to star in this kind of movie. You can even point them out. To me this is a moral AND movie-making flaw. The same movie that pioneered making a few people look like hundreds of people couldn't think to just have one actor look a little different with make-up and a fake mustache? Honestly? It makes the scene from Babylon about the black guy being given blackface to look "more black" feel so insignificant that it might as well not even take the form of a grain of dirt on our Earth. That scene might as well not exist.

OK, and now for the technical stuff.

The sad truth is you can be skilled at one thing and suck at another. You can have immoral beliefs and still be a talented filmmaker. And The Birth of a Nation likely stands as the greatest reminder of this irony. Its technical achievements have been constantly replicated over the last 108 years for more humane cinema, and some inhumane cinema.

First and foremost: this is one of the first cinematic epics. AN "epic" is described as a dramatic movie with a large and dramatic scale, often defined lengthy spectacle-oriented shots and bombastic music, to put it very simply. The "sword and sandal" genre is even defined as a subgenre of this on RY, although I disagree, as many peplums are simply adventure or action-adventure, but I digress.

The war scene, as I have said, shows D.W. Griffith literally inventing the first methods of making a few people look like hundreds of people through editing. This is a major success for the movie's technical achievements and does help the grand scale of the war scene, and several other scenes for their runtime (or until the charm of the scene runs out due to excessive length).

This movie also had a fixation on how to apply the camera itself for an emotional tool. First-person shots are very common with this movie, and through that we can see the emotions of these struggling people and, from economic experience, we can relate to these people well enough. Thankfully, this movie also has an obsession with narrative. While stories from back then hardly had a lot of character, the one-sides we get mingle with each other in ways we very easily understand, because we're kind of going through some of these things on a much smaller scale, although we feel the stress of these things. Having said that, this is mostly from an economic standpoint. We don't rely on slaves but we know all about economic failure.

When it comes to racial stuff, it's impossible to relate to Ben in his KKK scenes. But I also felt a sense of disappointment during the scene in which many Northern white men were being punished out of office by the some of those from black community, despite the fact that the North set them free. You don't want anyone dead for that or anything, but if I were a Northern at that time, I know I'd be saying, "What the hell? We literally free these guys and this is how they repay us? What would their families and friends say about this?"

But I really have to say: there's another problem with this movie. On the subject of Napoleon, the 1927 movie was five-and-a-half hours long, and it never once felt drawn out or overlong. The first act of this film really does feel that way, especially the war scene. The other acts don't draw out quite as long, but the movie still suffers from it. While it's certainly trying its hardest to rely on plot, there are so many characters with one side of development that it still feels either half-full or three-quarters full. The war scene in the first act might've been a pioneering feat which would be replicated much later on, notably when editing the movie to make a few people look like hundreds, but the scene recycled shots and what not. Honestly, no matter how flashy it was at the time, to me, you might as well be filming another action sequence from Ultraviolet.

Well, on the moral side, The Birth of a Nation is misguided and offensive. On the technical side, this is grandiose, innovative and detailed. As an analytical man, I will not be joining either the love train or the hate train. I won't be saying, "this is absolute dogshit for its messages and there are no excuses for it" or "this is one of the most influential movies of our time and stands as a keen reminder of the expectations and beliefs of the time." This is an innovative movie by a misguided man who liked a misguided novel and adapted it to the big screen. No more, no less. In the art of moviemaking, the technicality matters more. A message is one part of a whole movie, and while the movie acknowledges economic turmoil, it should NOT be promoting this KKK garbage. So any merit the economic statements might've had are countered by the racial statements.

From a personal, and maybe even religious viewpoint, even if some of the economics of the Confederacy had plausibility when used in other methods, you'd think that the people reading the Moses story would realize that slavery didn't work out before. It's the destiny of the descendants of the Israelites to sin and be taught a lesson in a neverending cycle, but having become the Egyptians themselves is exactly why they lost. I can only hope for the day when good, honest non-racial Southern conservative like my dad don't get slack for the sins of their ancestors anymore.

= 77

D.W. Griffith needs 1 more movie for a directorial score.