In between Griffith's 1915 landmark film and Nate Parker's most recently with the opposite of D.W.'s story there this artistic and pretentious rendition with the same title. Klaus Wyborny's avant-garde experiment is lifeless, purposeless and annoying film experience that brings the worst of ourselves. I tried to like it, really did...but halfway through it all I wanted to was to end my life. The film isn't bad because it's tasteless or crude, but simply because it tries to achieve qualities that are destined and better developed with other directors. This "Birth of a Nation" was painful to endure, and even Griffith's work managed to get something out of me, and I have a completely despise for it.
This train-wreck isn't a total disaster, it actually features a promising beginning though the narrative is a quite confusing one. In 1911, a group of German men decide to settle down in Morocco to build a nation for themselves. It's all fun and games and some hard work until conflicts about leadership and social division arise among them. According to an unknown TimeOut reviewer, the film breaks down film language and makes a parallel between what happens between those characters and the world of cinema with its divisions of genres, works and workers, a hard to climb pyramid back in the primordial years of cinema. I'm all for art but the film wasn't all that artsy, and that comment was even more ludicrous, only destined to confuse viewers since most people haven't heard about this thing they'll take his or her word as set in stone.
First part of the time is quite interesting to follow, very intriguing: silent characters interacting and working with each other; from time to time a voice-over tells us about how the community expanded and what changed between the people (dubbing version in English was strange, the narrator has a strong accent); and as for cinematography, Wyborny played with everything available from black-and-white to reduced colors and X-Ray effects, all very grainy and given a distinct look as if we're watching something from another era. Then comes the godawful second half where he blurs the images, repeats everything he presented early on but this time with an endless noisy piano soundtrack that goes on and on...I thought "Vinyl" and "Wavelength" were worse with those devices but at least I could envision something meaningful for life in those artsy trips instead of just worrying about my life.
"The Birth of a Nation" strikes as being one of the oddest experiments of New German Cinema movement, and one that is very expendable. It's not a case of digging deeper and you'll find something. It's exactly like that constant image that resonates ad nauseam with two guys digging and digging the land but nothing comes from it, except that one of the guys gets hurt when he hits something on the ground. A film about nothing and I hated it. 2/10
This train-wreck isn't a total disaster, it actually features a promising beginning though the narrative is a quite confusing one. In 1911, a group of German men decide to settle down in Morocco to build a nation for themselves. It's all fun and games and some hard work until conflicts about leadership and social division arise among them. According to an unknown TimeOut reviewer, the film breaks down film language and makes a parallel between what happens between those characters and the world of cinema with its divisions of genres, works and workers, a hard to climb pyramid back in the primordial years of cinema. I'm all for art but the film wasn't all that artsy, and that comment was even more ludicrous, only destined to confuse viewers since most people haven't heard about this thing they'll take his or her word as set in stone.
First part of the time is quite interesting to follow, very intriguing: silent characters interacting and working with each other; from time to time a voice-over tells us about how the community expanded and what changed between the people (dubbing version in English was strange, the narrator has a strong accent); and as for cinematography, Wyborny played with everything available from black-and-white to reduced colors and X-Ray effects, all very grainy and given a distinct look as if we're watching something from another era. Then comes the godawful second half where he blurs the images, repeats everything he presented early on but this time with an endless noisy piano soundtrack that goes on and on...I thought "Vinyl" and "Wavelength" were worse with those devices but at least I could envision something meaningful for life in those artsy trips instead of just worrying about my life.
"The Birth of a Nation" strikes as being one of the oddest experiments of New German Cinema movement, and one that is very expendable. It's not a case of digging deeper and you'll find something. It's exactly like that constant image that resonates ad nauseam with two guys digging and digging the land but nothing comes from it, except that one of the guys gets hurt when he hits something on the ground. A film about nothing and I hated it. 2/10
