On October 6 my father and I went to see the film The Birth of a Nation. It isn’t the racist movie that came out in 1915, it is a movie about the Nat Turner rebellion which happened in 1831. I will try not to spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it yet, but I will have to explain things.

In the beginning of the movie you see Nat Turner when he was a little boy living with his grandmother, mother, and father in slavery. His father gets caught stealing food so he runs away leaving his wife and Nat in slavery. The headmistress of the slave plantation finds out that Nat can read from watching other children, so she takes him in to give him lessons. But, of course, he still ends up in the field picking cotton. Soon later he grows up to become a preacher and is now owned by the mistress’s son who is now called Master. Master realizes that he can make money by letting Nat preach to slaves that misbehave on other plantations. When he sees how other slaves are getting treated he decides he wants to rebel.

What I liked about the movie is that it wasn’t like every other slave film. It didn’t just show what happens in slavery, it also showed a slave rebellion. It showed what happened to women slaves, and how they would get raped. There is a scene in which one of the guests of the slave owner wants to rape a woman, so the slave owner picks out a random woman, and while the woman was in the house being raped by the guest the only thing the slave’s husband could do was wait for her to come out.

To be honest I can’t think of any cons for the movie. I thought it was a great movie, and I loved that it showed how much damage Nat Turner did in Virginia during the rebellion. If you want to know more about Nat Turner or more about the man who made the movie (Nate Parker), check out this interview from the Breakfast Club.

-Lexi