The Birth of a Nation: Strong delivery

The Birth of a Nation (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for violence, cruelty, rape and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.7.16

It’s telling — likely for all the wrong reasons — that the Nat Turner slave rebellion hadn’t yet been dramatized in an American film.

Having viewed a solar eclipse as a sign — of a black man's hand reaching to obscure the
sun — Nat Turnet (Nate Parker, foreground) gathers an increasingly large band of
equally enraged slaves, in order to begin a movement that he hopes will gather strength
and build, from county to city to state.

Aside from earning a chapter in the 1977 TV miniseries Roots — which got a few key details wrong — the event has gone unacknowledged by mainstream visual media.

Until now.

Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation was the darling of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, taking both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize; without doubt, its arrival is timely. But tapping into the current combustible zeitgeist is ephemeral; relying on that sort of serendipity has consigned many films (and books, and plays) into the basement of forgotten relics.

The question is whether Parker has made a truly good film: an honorable, balanced and historically truthful document that will stand the test of time, and resonate with future viewers. On balance, the answer is yes: This shattering drama falls somewhat short of the bar set by 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, but it’s worthy competition. Thanks to these and other recent entries such as Selma and Fruitville Station, we’re experiencing an alternate — and equally valid — depiction of events which, in some cases, have remained shamefully overlooked.

ALL drama is compelling, particularly when experienced from differing viewpoints. Variety — as ever — is the spice of life.

Granted, Parker’s Birth of a Nation occasionally is guilty of grandiloquent excess. (The angel imagery is a particular overreach, as is his tendency toward unnecessary close-ups.) The indiscriminate butchery fomented by Turner is glossed over; no matter how justified the rage, it’s difficult to condone the slaughter of children (a detail Parker simply disregards).

The Artist: Artistry in every sense

The Artist (2011) • View trailer
Five stars. Rating: PG-13, and quite needlessly, for a fleeting vulgar gesture
By Derrick Bang


I know what you’re thinking.

Bad enough this film is black-and-white, and set in the late 1920s and early ’30s, but it has a French director and two French stars, and — worse yet — it’s silent? With only dialogue cards to convey the story? Seriously?

Having lost his career with the advent of talkies, silent film star George Valentin
(Jean Dujardin) sadly watches some of his former hits, and wonders if anything
can be salvaged from his former career. To make matters much worse, a young
woman who played a bit part in one of his previous pictures now has become
a sensation: first of the new breed of "modern" movie stars.

I can hear the clanking sound of eyes rolling across the land.

Well, get over it.

My Constant Companion, probably more dubious than most of you, would have preferred to stay home; she came along — quite reluctantly — because she’s a good sport (and because it’s part of her job description). She sat, arms crossed, as the film began: daring it to touch her in any manner.

Five minutes in, she was laughing with giddy delight. Half an hour in, she was at the edge of her seat, nervously clutching her hands together. An hour in, the tears began to flow.

Mind you, she’s not an easy sell.

Director Michel Hazanavicius, who so marvelously sent up James Bond-style spy films with his two OSS 117 comedies, has delivered a sumptuous homage to early Hollywood: a cleverly crafted, magnificently executed and superbly acted drama that deftly conveys cinema’s early years while using those very conventions to do so.

This isn’t merely a gorgeous film, although it’s that, as well; cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman’s work is luxuriously crisp, as always was the case with the best black-and-white films (which, darn it, simply looked better than many of today’s full-color cousins). The scene compositions, camera angles and staging always are flawless; Hazanavicius never has Schiffman go in for an unnecessary close-up.

Schiffman also works superbly with light and shadow, allowing various shades of gray to subtly dictate our response to a given scene.

Mostly, though, this film works because its story unfolds effortlessly — without, trust me, any force or contrivance — thanks to the consummate acting of stars Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. They’re simply amazing. Hazanavicius places heavy demands on both; they must convey a wealth of emotions mostly through body movement and facial expressions ... and they do so.

Every time, in every scene.

Dujardin and Bejo act the way Fred Astaire danced: with an ease, grace and instinctive “rightness” that quickly works a magical spell that we’re all too willing to fall under. This is true cinematic “sense of wonder”: We are, as viewers, transported back to whatever moment it was, when first we fell in love with movies.