Nate Parker's "The Birth of a Nation" a powerful chronicle of American rebel Nat Turner

Few filmmakers have made the sort of explosive first impression that Nate Parker does in his directorial debut, The Birth of a Nation, a startling, powerful biopic about Virginia-born slave, minister, and rebel leader Nat Turner, who led a famous slave revolt in 1831, three decades before the Civil War.

An indie production that Parker wrote, directed, and produced - and in which he stars as Turner - Birth of a Nation made headlines in January when Fox Searchlight acquired it for $17.5 million at Sundance in the richest deal the festival has ever seen. More recently, the rape charges made against Parker at Penn State in 1999, his 2001 acquittal, and the 2012 suicide of his accuser have been big news.

There has been so much talk about Parker that it has all but drowned out the film itself - a fast-moving, deeply absorbing, and thoroughly exciting directorial debut. I'm going to stick to the moviemaking here.

[Read more: The Birth of a Nation dilemma: How to disentangle the director from the work?]

Parker's film is not the most daring work of cinema. It's a far more conventional piece of Hollywood storytelling than the more formally inventive recent film about the era, Gary Ross' Free State of Jones. But it displays a mastery of the form rare for a first film - with outstanding performances across the board.

Parker gives a controlled, subtle turn as Turner, a man who undergoes a radical ideological shift over the course of his brief life. (He was 31 when he led the revolt that ended with his death.)

He's backed by a fine ensemble, including Aunjanue Ellis as Turner's mother, Nancy; Aja Naomi King as his wife, Cherry; and Armie Hammer as Turner's Southampton County, Va., owner, Samuel Turner.

[Read more: Nate Parker wants to talk about `The Birth of a Nation' - not his past]

Equally impressive is Parker's ability to use every aspect of the film as a provocation in a politically charged work that doesn't pull its punches. Nat Turner's desperate rebellion and his violent tactics are a turnoff to the folks who write high school history books. Parker wants to remind us - to tell us - that Turner was a true American hero.

He begins by loading the film's title with a punch.

Parker named the film after D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, a monstrously racist and monstrously popular 1915 epic about the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Adapted from novelist Thomas Dixon Jr.'s The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, Griffith's movie portrayed emancipation as a grave error, and the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic brotherhood with the power to heal the nation - principally, as the movie would have it, by stopping savage black men (played by white actors in blackface) from raping white women.

The film has been credited with revitalizing the KKK, whose membership swelled in its day.

Yet, it would have become a mere footnote to history had it not also revolutionized the medium. The Birth of a Nation single-handedly introduced modern film language. Before Griffith, movies were little more than static, stagy recordings of theatrical performances. The Birth of the Nation made filmmaking into a dynamic, vital art form of its own. It's an ugly irony: Our most racist film is celebrated today as a game-changer.

Parker's The Birth of a Nation subverts that other film with a strong point of view and a concrete goal: to return a measure of the dignity and humanity denied African Americans in the countless numbers of racist books, movies, paintings, and music that went into creating American culture.

Griffith's film defined American identity in terms of white people's duty to undo any sense of agency and self-determination that African Americans hoped to wrest from emancipation.

Parker's film locates our nation's birth in the ability of African Americans to envision hope in spite of repression - even if Turner's early attempt by African Americans to shape their own destiny led to a virtual mass suicide. The rebellion ended with the deaths of 65 whites, while 200 slaves were killed in what was to be a preamble of violence to come.

To borrow an idiom from comic books, Parker's The Birth of a Nation is an origin story about one of America's first black rebels, a stirring account of the education, early ministry, and eventual martyrdom of one the progenitors of what would become the civil rights movement.

Parker's depiction of slavery is one of sustained brutality - stark, unadorned, and unsentimentalized. He doesn't single out specific acts to outrage the audience, but instead shows how the fabric of daily life was ruled by the master-slave relationship.

In a typical scene, an excited young girl of 6 or 7 bursts out of the house to show off her new birthday present to the other kids in the household - most of whom are slaves.

The gift she parades around isn't a hairbrush or a purse. It's a human person, a boy about the same age, who is tethered to his owner by a homemade leash, a length of rope attached to a noose around his neck.

Parker's Turner grows up in relative comfort - his owners are wealthy and liberal, so they feed and house their slaves well. The family matriarch, Elizabeth (Penelope Ann Miller), is especially progressive, and she encourages the young Turner to learn how to read and write using the Bible. She balks when he tries to read other books - they can be understood only by whites, she tells him.

Turner's sense of self is shaped by Baptist religiosity, and he becomes a spiritual guide to other slaves. When isolated cases of slave rebellions arise, the local white pastor (Mark Boone Junior) suggests Turner make a tour of neighboring farms to give slaves some religion.

His job is simple: Preach self-sacrifice. Talk about the Christian heaven, and reassure slaves that servitude will be rewarded in the next life.

In a matter of months, the fundamental inhumanity of slavery inspires him to use biblical language to preach resistance and eventually revolt.

The Birth of a Nation has a flawless internal logic and moves fluidly and inevitably toward its bloody conclusion. While it is propelled by the decision of its male victims, the film does try, if not always successfully, to give voice to the experience of enslaved black women.

Parker's celebration of Turner as a hero has led some critics to suggest his film endorses violent revolution. I think that's a simplistic, shortsighted reading.

Nor is it accurate to call The Birth of a Nation a revisionist history. It's a much-needed - and beautifully realized - corrective.

tirdad@phillynews.com

215-854-2736

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The Birth of a Nation

3 1/2 (Out of four stars)

Directed by Nate Parker. With Parker, Aunjanue Ellis, Aja Naomi King, Armie Hammer, Penelope Ann Miller. Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Running time: 2 hours.

Parent's guide: R (disturbing violent content, and some brief nudity).

Playing at: Area theaters.

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