I have to admit that I wasn’t really looking forward to watching Birth of a Nation. Because of its racism it is a controversial movie, but at the same time it’s also one which has been very important to the medium of film. Plus it’s also a movie with a running time of tree hours, which is very long for a silent movie. I decide to take my time watching it on a lazy Saturday afternoon and just experience it.
The Birth of a Nation is about the civil war in America, the moment when Lincoln is assassinated and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, but mainly told from the perspective of the south (which is where director D.W. Griffith grew up). The center of the story are the Stoneman family from the North and the Camerons from the South.
Already during the time of its release the movie was controversial. White actors wearing blackface portray former slaves as sexual predators. The Afro-Americans who are active in politics are portrayed as not very well-developed, having them eat chicken and secretly drinking alcohol during meetings. These moments are mainly shown in the second part of the movie. The first part mostly shows (especially for the time) impressive and realistic imagery of war. With a camera placed high above the battlefield, Griffith impressively shows hundreds of extras fighting. But that’s not the only thing which makes Birth of a Nation important. Griffith used both close-ups and wide shot and also switched to another place during a scene to show what was happening somewhere else at the same time. Things most viewers watching the movie now take for granted, but which were new at the time.
Still I have to admit that it’s not a title I would be rewatching. I purely saw it because I thought it be important to see it once, but the story itself didn’t manage to forget everything around me and the racism shown is shocking. A film which is important for movie history, but not a must see. Roger Ebert worded the struggle with the subject matter in a beautiful way, stating that there is a moment where you might watch a movie for what it is and not for what you think of it, which is fitting here.
Yes, once was more than enough for me.