美国国家公共电台 NPR A Man And An Amendment Are Re-Examined In 'The Birth Of A Nation' And '13th'

A Man And An Amendment 1 Are Re-Examined In 'The Birth Of A Nation' And '13th'

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Two movies open today that deal with America's racial history. There is Nate Parker's drama, "The Birth Of A Nation." It tells the story of a real-life slave revolt. And there's Ava DuVernay's documentary, "13th." It examines the legacy 3 of the constitutional amendment that outlawed 4 slavery. Our critic, Bob Mondello, says the films intersect in complicated ways.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE 5: A young and inquisitive 6 1820s slave in "Birth Of A Nation" discovers, almost as soon as he learns to read, that there will be limits to his reading.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BIRTH OF A NATION")

PENELOPE ANN MILLER 7: (As Elizabeth Turner) These books are for white folks. They're full of things your kind wouldn't understand.

MONDELLO: What his kind would understand, figures the plantation's mistress, is the Bible. Young Nat Turner takes to the good book as he grows up and shares its teachings with his fellow slaves...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BIRTH OF NATION")

NATE PARKER: (As Nat Turner) Heavenly Father, we come to thank you for your word and your will.

MONDELLO: ...Which attracts the attention of neighboring slave holders 8.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BIRTH OF A NATION")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Your slaves sure do know how to behave.

ARMIE HAMMER: (As Samuel Turner) Well, they God-fearing. One of them is a preacher.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) People might good money to have them calmed down a bit, especially by one of their own.

MONDELLO: Nat's master realizes there'll be profit in renting Nat out to preach.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BIRTH OF NATION")

PARKER: (As Nat Turner) Submit yourselves to your masters - not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.

MONDELLO: But Nat sees such brutality 9 in his travels. Could the Bible really endorse 10 it? His preaching changes in tone as he decides God wants him to lead a slave revolt.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BIRTH OF A NATION")

PARKER: (As Nat Turner) To execute vengeance 11 on the demonic nations, to bind 12 their kings with chains.

MONDELLO: Filmmaker Nate Parker has been nurturing 13 "The Birth Of A Nation" for the better part of a decade, and it shows in imagery that can turn oddly haunting, even as the story lacerates - light streaming through slats in a barn, ripe cotton floating, cloud-like, in a field. Parker's directing style can be as in-your-face as his script.

He hammers home one slavery horror with a literal hammer, and he leans way too much on soaring strings 14, all of which makes "Birth Of A Nation" more solid than shattering. Oscar talk would seem optimistic, even if Parker didn't have personal controversy 15 swirling 16 around him.

Still, it's an impressive first feature. In her documentary, "13th," Ava DuVernay notes that the wording of the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, quote, "except as a punishment for crime," end quote. She then forcefully argues that that loophole has been used for politics and for profit.

She uses scenes from D. W. Griffith's original "Birth Of A Nation," a racist 17 1915 epic 18, to establish how discriminatory attitudes were deliberately 19 shaped after the end of slavery and how, in an age of mass incarceration 20, that has allowed prisons to become this era's plantations 21.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "13TH")

JELANI COBB: There's a famous scene where a woman throws herself off a cliff rather than be raped 22 by a black male criminal.

MONDELLO: Let me pause Professor Jelani Cobb to note that nearly every time someone utters that word - criminal - whether the speaker is a president, a professor, neighbor, newscaster, anyone at all - the screen fills with the word criminal in huge block letters. It's to mark how often and how casually 23 criminality gets linked with black men in public discourse 24. Now, back to describing that scene.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "13TH")

COBB: In the film, you see black people being a threat to white women.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: All the myths of black men as rapists was ultimately stemmed by the reality that the white political elite 25 and the business establishment needed black bodies working.

MONDELLO: Black bodies working - think roadside chain gangs or, more recently, corporations helping 26 rehabilitate 27 inmates 29 by paying them pennies to make sports uniforms. The movie's list of companies that have benefited from cheap inmate 28 labor 30 is long and damning. That's also true of its recounting of how the war on drugs created imbalances after separate-but-equal was otherwise banned - mandatory 31 sentences identical for one ounce of crack cocaine 32, used mostly in inner cities, and one hundred ounces of powdered cocaine, the drug of choice in white suburbs. It's a policy now condemned 33, not just by prison reform activists 35, but by some perhaps unexpected voices.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "13TH")

NEWT GINGRICH: We absolutely should have treated crack and cocaine as exactly the same thing.

MONDELLO: Yes, that's Newt Gingrich.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "13TH")

GINGRICH: It was an enormous burden on the black community, but it also fundamentally violated a sense of core fairness.

GINGRICH: Mixing talking heads with archival footage, DuVernay brings the same force to "13th" that she did to her Martin Luther King drama, "Selma," only, this time, she's mapping the twisty road since we've traveled since - well, as lawyer activist 34 Van Jones makes clear, since the events depicted 36 in "Birth Of A Nation."

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "13TH")

VAN JONES: They called the end of slavery jubilee 37. We thought we were done then. And then you had a hundred years of Jim Crow terror and lynching. Dr. King - these guys come on the scene - Ella Jo Baker 38, Fannie Lou Hamer. We get the bills passed to vote, and then they break out the handcuffs.

MONDELLO: A century and three-quarters after Nat Turner's slave revolt, a century and a half after the 13th Amendment, and still, says this powerful documentary, in chains. I'm Bob Mondello.