WELL. DAMN. the New Yorker went IN on the movie. yikes. partial swipe below:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/the-birth-of-a-nation-isnt-worth-defending


“The Birth of a Nation” Isn’t Worth Defending
Nate Parker’s retelling of Nat Turner’s rebellion does not succeed as art or as propaganda.

"There are talented black filmmakers making movies today—Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler, and Barry Jenkins, to name a few—whose work addresses urgent material via genuinely original means. We do them and ourselves a disservice by lowering our expectations, and extending undue credit to bad art.

For Parker, in any case, that credit is less likely to be extended now. The unsettling circumstances of his trial at Penn State threw into even sharper relief the question of the importance—the necessity—of his movie. As with that first wave of awestruck reviews, focus remained on Parker’s person, rather than on his movie. Some commentators—including a number of prominent black women, among them the writer Roxane Gay—declared that they wouldn’t see it. “I cannot separate the art and the artist,” Gay wrote. Others insisted that Parker’s subject was justification enough to overlook or entirely ignore his personal flaws. Parker, sensing that the success of his movie depended on his performance in the media, cast about awkwardly, citing his wife and daughters as signs of his maturation, and referring to what happened with the now deceased woman he knew in college as “one of the most painful moments in my life.” In August, he told Ebony that he was never taught the meaning of consent in sex.

“The Birth of a Nation” is not worth the efforts of its defenders. It’s hard even to call it a successful attempt at propaganda. The early euphoria surrounding the movie was prompted by the way it seemed to answer the demands of its time, sublimating the eye-for-an-eye Old Testament ethos of such fiery agitators as Stokely Carmichael and Elijah Muhammad into the safer precincts of the screen. That fire was checked by a different political imperative: the need to listen to and respect the stories of women who have suffered at the hands of men. The first telling of Turner’s story was prompted by fear—a political force, yes, but also a primal feeling, as palpable today as it was almost two hundred years ago, in Southampton County.

In the “Confessions,” after Turner has said his piece, Thomas Gray reflects, “The calm, deliberate composure with which he spoke of his late deed and intentions, the expression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm, still bearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him; clothed with rags and covered with chains; yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven, with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man; I looked on him and my blood curdled in my veins.”

Gray gives the criminal-justice system the last word. After a listing of the charges, the judge declares, “Your only hope must be in another life.” As for earth: nothing but the satisfaction of the public’s lust for revenge. “The judgement of the court is, that you be taken . . . to the place of execution, and on Friday next, between the hours of 10 A.M. and 2 P.M. be hung by the neck until you are dead! dead! dead! and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.”

Slavery in this country was never a hero’s journey. It is a ghost story, and Nat Turner is its poltergeist, dashing pottery against America’s walls. “It will be long remembered in the annals of our country,” Gray wrote of the revolt. “And many a mother as she presses her infant darling to her bosom, will shudder at the recollection of Nat Turner, and his band of ferocious miscreants.” This has proved true so far, and it will likely always be so, with or without Nate Parker’s interjections. Thomas Gray’s little book is free for download."

ouch.
further, i hear there's little or no violence toward the slaveowners depicted.

what in the fuck???? that's like the main reason i wanted to see the shit.

i am not bothering w/this movie.

i guess i'll have to stick w/Django Unchained (best slave movie ever - 12YAS is #2, btw).