| Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: October 7, 2016 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
36
Mixed:
13
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
With The Birth of a Nation, Nate Parker has shown himself to be a confident, extraordinary filmmaker. He not only gets good performances from his cast, but has created a film that seems sure of itself, one that knows when to lean into depicting hatred, when to lean into depicting love, and when to cut away; when the look on a face is more important than the blood on a back and when it isn't.
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A biographical drama steeped equally in grace and horror, it builds to a brutal finale that will stir deep emotion and inevitable unease. But the film is perhaps even more accomplished as a theological provocation, one that grapples fearlessly with the intense spiritual convictions that drove Turner to do what he had previously considered unthinkable.
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The movie, uneven as it is, has terrific momentum and passages of concentrated visual beauty. The acting is strong even when the script wanders into thickets of rhetoric and mystification. And despite its efforts to simplify and italicize the story, it’s admirably difficult, raising thorny questions about ends and means, justice and mercy, and the legacy of racism that lies at the root of our national identity.
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Parts of The Birth of a Nation are bluntly effective and beautifully acted, though one of the drawbacks, ironically, is Parker's own performance. Even the rape victims of the screenplay have a hard time getting their fair share of the screen time; everything in the story, by design, keeps the focus and the anguished close-ups strictly on Parker.
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