Nat Turner Dream

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Nate Parker, the director, writer, and producer of 2016’s The Birth of a Nation, had been determined to produce a biopic about the slave-turned-rebel leader Nat Turner since 2009, when he began penning the script. Parker had learned about Turner during his studies at the University of Oklahoma. He was so determined to have his project completed that, in 2013, he reportedly told his agents that he would be retiring from acting until he could portray Turner in a movie. "I was willing to stick to that — and if it was my lot to never act again, so be it," he told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview.

Now, three years later, after some $100,000 of personal investment, and 11 groups of investors (comprising 60% of the film’s $10 million budget), Parker’s dream project has been completed, and released to riotous songs of praise. Upon premiering at Sundance in January 2016, the film was met with standing ovations, with Variety reporting that it "received the most enthusiastic standing ovation at this year's Sundance Film Festival so far.” Soon thereafter, Fox Searchlight Pictures purchased the worldwide rights for $17.5 million—the richest in the festival’s history.

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As he dies, Turner’s eyes look up to Heaven, and another celestial vision is shown; his earthly mission is finished (all that’s missing is the vocal affirmation.) The boy is transformed as time fast-forwards; he’s a grown man in Union uniform, charging bravely into battle. This ending struck me as a disingenuous betrayal of a prior sequence (and the film’s most effective) where countless slaves are executed in reprisal for Turner’s rebellion (played over Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of “Strange Fruit.”) It’s an inappropriately objective scene of redemption that says despite the bloody consequences of his mission, Turner’s mission changed the course of African American history for the

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