Review In Nate Parker’s ‘The Birth of a Nation,’ Must See and Won’t See ...

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Review: In Nate Parker’s ‘The Birth of a Nation,’ Must-See and Won’t-See Collide - https://youtu.be/5NkJhytaRM4



Can going to a movie be a moral obligation? A political gesture? There are occasions when various interested parties — filmmakers, publicists and perhaps especially critics — would like you to think so. Buying a ticket can become a test of seriousness, of personal commitment to a position or a cause. Jerry Seinfeld’s sitcom mom would not rest until her son had fulfilled the duty to watch “Schindler’s List.” (“Oh, you have to go. You have to!”) To make other plans would have been a filial, tribal and ethical betrayal, a lapse only a few steps removed from outright Holocaust denial.









The question can also be asked in reverse. Do you ever have a moral obligation not to see a movie? Sometimes this is a matter of objectionable content, but more often nowadays the principled refusal to watch a film is a response to the bad behavior, proved or alleged, of its maker. People stay away from Woody Allen and Roman Polanski’s movies because they believe that to do otherwise would be to condone — or at least not to condemn strongly enough — the sexual crimes of which those directors have been accused.



“The Birth of a Nation,” Nate Parker’s debut feature as a director, presents an unusually vexing and complicated case. In the months between its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January and its release this Friday, the movie — which dramatizes the slave rebellion led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831 — has found itself on both sides of the argument, simultaneously the must-see and the won’t-see movie of the year.



Arriving at Sundance in Utah amid an ultrawhite Oscar season, the film was greeted with ovations and a lucrative distribution deal. Hollywood had sinned, and redemption was at hand. Beyond that, an aura of almost messianic promise gathered around Mr. Parker (who plays Nat Turner) and his movie, which assumed an uncommon burden of importance. With a title evoking a grotesquely racist cinematic masterpiece and advertisements depicting the star’s head noosed in an American flag, “The Birth of a Nation” presented itself as an indispensable document not only of the country’s brutal past but also of its inflamed and polarized present. There was no question that you would have to see it.



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