The Birth of a Nation

Posted on October 6, 2016 at 5:52 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for disturbing violent content, and some brief nudity
Profanity:	Racist epithets
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkenness
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense, brutal, and graphic violence, rape, murder, hanging, lynching
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	October 7, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	January 9, 2017
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01LTHN5TU

Nat Turner was an enslaved man in early 19th century Virginia who led other enslaved people in an armed rebellion against slaveholders thirty years before the Civil War. They killed more than 50 white people and more than 200 black people.

For actor Nate Parker, Turner’s story has been a long-time passion project, and he has audaciously claimed, or reclaimed the title of the D.W. Griffith silent film as revered for its innovations in cinematic storytelling as it is reviled for its racist, pro-KKK storyline. “The Birth of a Nation” title is provocative, timely, serious-minded, and powerful, and so is the film. The title refutes the pernicious narrative of the 1915 Griffith film, an act of rebellion and justice and an assertion of dignity and humanity. And so does the quote at the beginning of the film, from the man who both wrote of the inalienable rights of all men and was a slaveholder, Thomas Jefferson. The film opens with a selection from this passage:

an the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.–But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one’s mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.

We first see Nat as a young boy, in a firelight gathering where enslaved people have congregated for some moments that recall the traditions of their home. Three birthmarks on the boy’s chest identify him as someone who will be a leader. Nat’s father, trying to get food for his family, kills a slave hunter and runs away.

There is a tense scene of terrible menace, as the other slave hunters come looking for Nat’s father that night, threatening Nat’s mother and grandmother, and finally the boy, too. We then see Nat running from a young white boy on the plantation, only to find that it is an innocent game, and the two seem to share a genuine sense of companionship. This is mirrored later in the film, when the then-adult Nat sees a little white girl playing with an enslaved girl by tugging her along with a rope like a dog on a leash.

Later, noticing the boy’s intelligence, the wife of the plantation owner (Penelope Ann Miller) brings the boy inside her home and teaches him to read. But the books on the shelves are not for him. “These books are for white folks. They are full of things your kind won’t understand.” There is just one book she will let him read: the Bible. He becomes a fervent believer, preaching the gospel to the other enslaved people.

As adults, Sam (Armie Hammer), the boy who was playing with him, has become the plantation owner and Nat (Parker) is his trusted servant. Nat persuades Sam to buy a woman who is being auctioned, and who clearly has suffered terribly. She becomes his wife and they love each other dearly.

When Sam falls on hard times and begins to drink too much, he starts renting out Nat’s services as a preacher to the other slaveholders. The plantation owners hope that his lessons about God’s will and the promise of heaven will keep them compliant. But Nat’s travels bring him into contact with the horrific atrocities inflicted by other slave holders. And some of the Bible’s lessons about justice and opposing tyranny take on an urgent power, as Nat’s wife is raped and beaten by slave hunters, another enslaved woman (Gabrielle Union) is forced to have sex with a man Sam hopes to do business with, and Nat is brutally whipped for baptizing a white man. He increasingly sees visions of a rebellion.

As a film, the movie falters, slipping into melodrama that recalls the Griffith film in ways it does not intend. But it transcends its storytelling shortcomings because of its palpable sincerity and passion, its force as a searing statement of history, and its relevance today. The fight for justice is a defining purpose of humanity, and Nat Turner’s cause goes on.

Parents should know that this film includes brutal slavery-related abuse including whipping, rape, beating, and forced feeding, a marital sexual situation with some nudity, drinking and drunkenness, and strong and racist language.

Family discussion: What made Nat Turner willing to take the risks of a rebellion? Why does this movie share the title of the famous D.W. Griffith silent film?

If you like this, try: “12 Years a Slave” and “Amistad” and read Nat Turner’s own words

Denial

Posted on October 6, 2016 at 5:50 pm

You can refuse. You can disagree. You can object. You can argue. But none of those words is as charged as “denial,” with its multiple uses all implying injustice, unfairness, even bullying. The title of this film establishes immediately that the courtroom and media battle it depicts is not one of popularity, reputation, or consensus. It is about the core issue of proof — how we know what we know, and, in this case, what that means as we approach the time when everyone with a memory of the experience in question is gone.

The experience in question, in the most literal sense of the term, is the Holocaust. David Irving (Timothy Spall, all oily charm), a British self-described historian, wrote and lectured widely about his view that Hitler never ordered the killing of Jews in concentration camp and that in fact there were no gas chambers used for mass executions of Jewish prisoners. He was intentionally offensive — in both sense of the word. He said:

Ridicule alone isn’t enough, you’ve got to be tasteless about it. You’ve got to say things like ‘More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.’ Now you think that’s tasteless, what about this? I’m forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try and kid people that they were in these concentration camps, it’s called the Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and Other Liars, ‘ASSHOLs’. Can’t get more tasteless than that, but you’ve got to be tasteless because these people deserve our contempt.

And he took his case to the classroom of a professor who specialized in the Holocaust, Emory’s Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz, feisty but thoughtful, with a red perm, bright scarves, and a Queens accent), to confront her in person, without notice but with a video camera. She refused to debate him, saying that it would legitimize his arguments. And she described him in her book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, as:

one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial. Familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda. A man who is convinced that Britain’s great decline was accelerated by its decision to go to war with Germany, he is most facile at taking accurate information and shaping it to confirm his conclusions.

He wanted more than a classroom confrontation after that. He filed a lawsuit against Lipstadt and her publisher, and he filed it in England, where the laws are more favorable for plaintiffs in libel cases. In the US, the person filing the suit has to prove his or her case. In the UK, it is up to the defendant to prove the truth of the statements made. In cinematic terms, the legal and physical setting heightens the inherent courtroom drama — all the wigs and posh accents and strangeness of the rules boost the theatricality of the presentation, especially after Lipstadt learns that neither she nor the Holocaust survivors who are vitally concerned with the trial will be allowed to testify. For Lipstadt, not being permitted to use her voice was a whole separate category of denial.

This is a compelling courtroom drama that goes to the deepest questions not just of Holocaust history or any history but of how we know what we know and who we believe. It is always tempting to say “let’s listen to both sides.” But as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts.” The meticulous combing of Irving’s work to check footnotes and translate original documents (funded by Steven Spielberg and other donors) proved that Irving’s “conclusions” were based on misrepresentation. The meticulous combing of his shelves and shelves of diaries proved his bias. This is a compelling drama and an urgent reminder of the importance of rigorous challenges to unsubstantiated, malicious “history.”

Parents should know that this film deals with the Holocaust, with references to genocide and ethnic bigotry. It includes social drinking and some strong language.

Family discussion: What evidence would you want to see if you were the judge in this case? Should Professor Lipstadt have testified?

If you like this, try: This C-SPAN program about the trial, featuring Irving and Lipstadt and the website that includes the trial documents

Interview: Father Joseph of Haiti on His New Documentary

Posted on October 5, 2016 at 3:46 pm

“Father Joseph” is an inspiring new documentary from Floating World Pictures about a priest in Haiti who has helped Fondwa, one of the poorest communities in the world, to develop schools, a radio station, and a bank and to build homes to make micro-loans to support the local economy. Almost all of it was wiped out by the devastating earthquake of 2010. And so, he is starting all over again, working with the Raising Haiti Foundation.

I spoke with Father Joseph, and the documentary’s director, Jeff Kaufman, and producer, Marcia Ross.

Father Joseph, what’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?

FJ: Oh, it’s to be with myself and to be with God. First I want to stay awake and to talk to myself and to talk to God to see what is His plan for the day. I do have mine but what is His? But that helps me to stay out of trouble. And then take my shower. If there is any breakfast, I’ll take it and then continue. My day starts sometime at 5:00 and finishes at 10 PM.

So much is needed. It can be overwhelming and frustrating. Where do you begin?

FJ: Okay, as you know I am religious, I belong to the Spiritans and also I am a priest, a Christian and a Haitian. The first thing for me is to proclaim the good news, the gospel values. I cannot do it by myself, I need a lot of people. People who have the skills and people who are the beneficiaries. My aim is really to put the political struggle of the people, to put it together with my prayers and with the liturgy. And also to help other people to help themselves in such a way that we can break the cycle of poverty, to break the cycle of economic dependence.

Like in Fondwa, the first thing I did was to help the people to get organized and to identify the problems in their own living environment and to see how best they can help themselves. The country has been independent since 1804 but if the people still cannot get access to water, to healthcare, to education, to some of the basic human needs, that means nobody cares. The one who has to care is themselves. To give them the confidence in themselves to get back their human dignity, to help them to realize that they are somebody, they have been created in God’s likeness. They can do greater things that people think they cannot do. That struck me when we are looking at Jesus’ approach to the leper is in the society at that time. A leper in Jesus’ society was not sick but he was rejected and he has to accept that he is nobody in the society. More than that, he has to ring a bell when you are very far from him to say “don’t get close to me because I am not good.” Not only you are poor, you’re sick, but you have been disregarded and people put in your mind that you are nobody. And for me that’s BS.

That’s why also for me when I’m in front of you or in front of somebody else I think first, “I am walking on a sacred soil because you have been created in God’s likeness. I can help you as much as you can help me.” That’s why also basing on the gospel values for me I cannot be the only one who was access to water in my community, I cannot be the only one who has access to healthcare, the only one who can feed my children, the only one will have access to education. That means your failure is my failure, the suffering of somebody is the suffering of humanity. When somebody is hungry, it’s the whole humanity which has been disregarded. Nobody should go hungry, nobody should go without water, without healthcare, without education. That’s why as believers, I said believers, because in my work I work with Muslims, I work with Jewish people, I work with Voodoo people, I work with all types of Protestants, we see even celebrate the eucharist together because the work that we are doing for the poor bring us together.

That’s why I think as believers we are called to heal whatever is broken in our society. We have to become healers, we have to become build ‘bridgers’ and we have to be a living good news, a living gospel, we have to become a eucharist, the broken bread for each other. For me, that’s why it’s a big challenge for me to continue to work with the poor, to realize that so many young people are hungry and when they shower me with problems, I can only listen to them and that bothers me a lot to see that I cannot help them. Like a lot of young people in Haiti want to go to school, they cannot. They finish with high school they want to go to university, the college they cannot. That’s why I think this movie will bring more attention on the people of goodwill here of big heart who can get involved with us. I think together we can really create a better world for all of God’s children. So this movie is a part of the work of making those services and opportunities available.

Father Joseph, how does your home inspire you?

FJ: For me there is a beauty of spirituality by living on the top of the mountains. When you read the Scriptures you see that Jesus goes most of the time on the top of the mountain to meet with his father. And for me to be at the top of the mountain, to look at the sunrise or the sunset or to watch the stars, for me it’s a magical experience.

Marcia, how did you get involved with this project?

MR: The first time I met Jeff he was about to leave on his first trip to Haiti to meet with father Joseph. He had met him here prior to our meeting and I was very taken with what he was telling me about father Joseph and the work. I’ve had a wonderful career, including 16 years at Disney and doing casting, but I was really looking to do some other things with my life things to sort of open up my life experience. One of the great things about casting — it was my opportunity to help other people achieve their own goals. As a casting director you see talent and you try to help them get into parts that can change their lives and I think that was really fulfilling. But after so many years of doing it I really wanted to find other work that was fulfilling in a new way. And when Jeff told me this story I just started wanting to get involved into doing it. Making documentaries you meet people very totally outside anybody I have ever met. You meet people like Father Joseph, who do a lot of selfless work, the only reward is purpose in life really, there is no financial reward, there is no fame, there is no a lot of things but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to make a difference in the world. His motivation is not for fame and fortune for himself or recognition for himself, his motivation is for making a difference in the lives of others and I think that’s a very important idea.

FJ: You know the fact is people who join me in this work not only they help me to transform the lives of others but their own lives.

Jeff, you seamlessly integrated archival footage with new material in the film. How did that happen?

JK: We started getting footage of father Joseph in 2011 and started shooting initially in 2012 and had a series of shoots but one of the things that was kind of amazing was, we wanted to have a sense of the modern history of Haiti and also the evolution father Joseph’s community Fondwa. We reached out to a lot of people and what are the odds but here is this guy who grew up in the mountains of Haiti far from anywhere and we were able to basically find 25 years of videos of him here and there and other places speaking and it was from six or seven different sources.

It was great to get the video but it also represented the magic of this film. All these people you’ve never known before, you reach out to them and they help you in the most amazing way and they become partners in the effort. And then later on one of our executive producers is now helping with the University of Fondwa another of our executive producers is now helping with Father Joseph’s Peasant organization and its a miraculous thing to see. That’s always the intent of the film was to be more than just a film.

What kind of a crew did you have for your own footage?

JK: The first time I came to Haiti I worked by myself. I had done this film about Ella Fitzgerald and jazz in the 1930s, and by necessity I had done the audio myself, not a good way to proceed. You can’t bring a traditional crew to Haiti, you can’t ask them to work that hard and you can’t ask them to put themselves through the risk but my son Daniel had come out of film school and he had worked on a couple of projects first doing audio, editing some pieces, and his talent level just kept rising and rising and rising. And after a lot internal debates, and some concerns about physical safety, I asked Daniel if he would like to be the the cinematographer. Daniel was immensely talented and so I did the field audio and Daniel was the cinematographer. It was an an amazing father-son experience and I think Daniel made a lifetime of connections for himself as well.

FJ: That fits what we are trying to accomplish. As a priest, I gather as many people as I can to help them to discover their inner self and define the meaning of their life and to give back as much as they get. For me this is what I have been able to accomplish on my own and I want to share it with others, to really share what you have and what you are with others. For me if anybody can accomplish that, that means you have accomplished your goal in life.

JK: One of the remarkable things about father Joseph — he’s the perfect example of not just faith but faith and action. Faith has a lot more meaning if you actually use it to do good. More than that, he is the most inclusive priest, not cavalierly but based on who people are. He is a very passionate Catholic priest who really believes in that faith but he also really sincerely believes that good people of other faiths all have their own path to heaven. I probably couldn’t embrace him if it wasn’t for that and I love that openness to other ways of life and other paths. Where it came from in this guy I don’t know but it’s really unusual.

FJ: I think we cannot put God in a box and say that my God is the better God. We have to let God be God and contemplate God wherever we are and in whatever we are doing. In Creole we used to say “del mon de mon.” After each fountain there is another fountain.

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Contest: Win LEGO Scooby-Doo Haunted Hollywood for Halloween!

Posted on October 4, 2016 at 3:58 pm

Bring LEGO Scooby-Doo home for Halloween!

Scooby-Doo Haunted Hollywood is set in a LEGO world. the Scooby gang try to rescue an old movie studio, which is not only threatened by developers who want to tear it down, but by a series of movie monsters, which are suddenly haunting the place.

I have a copy to give away! Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Scooby in the subject line and tell me your favorite Halloween candy. Don’t forget your address! (US addresses only) I’ll pick a winner at random on October 11, 2016. Good luck and Happy Halloween!

Exclusive Clip: My Many Sons

Posted on October 4, 2016 at 7:00 am

“My Many Sons” follows the true story of legendary basketball coach Don Meyer (Judge Reinhold), who, despite becoming wheelchair-bound after a nearly fatal car wreck, passed Bobby Knight to become the most winning basketball coach in NCAA history. Produced by Brad Wilson (“A Family Thing,” “Becoming Jesse Tate,” “Set Apart”) and Casey Bond and directed by Ralph E. Portillo (“The Last Great Ride,” “Big Brother Trouble”), this inspirational motion picture is a story of character, relationships, and turning young boys into men. We are pleased to present an exclusive clip.