Milestone in filmmaking; Terrific first half, and a racist second.

Rating: 6/10 (28 August 2015)

Hmm... So, where should I start? Before I deal with the plot and its aspects, let be clear that 'Birth of a Nation' is a milestone in cinematic storytelling; the scale of the production was the largest of its time, and the scope of its story, with the way it uses focusing, different-angled views and cross-cutting so dynamically to smoothen the flow of the story, is simply extraordinary. It showed what film could be and how effectively stories could be told through the medium.
So the film is a two-part three-hour epic, of which the first part (Civil War era) is truly terrific in every sense. The story, the history, the anti-war sentiment and the spectacular battlefield scenes, which are brilliant in scale, action and realism. Everything from the initial introduction of the lead characters to the assassination of President Lincoln, the first part is incredible and important, both as history of film and US. Actually, the first part itself can be seen as an entire film (90 minutes), and I could recommend it to any cinephile and be sure of their satisfaction.
But the second part (Reconstruction Era)... It's a deplorable chain of one racist scene after the other. I've always thought that movies dealing with history should represent the events in an impartial way, and liberty and imagination are applicable only when it comes to characters' personal lives. But here, the way the events are depicted and heroes are created, one would cringe or roll their eyes on almost every scene. But as Roger Ebert says about the film, "As slavery is the great sin of America, so 'The Birth of a Nation' is Griffith's sin, for which he tried to atone all the rest of his life. If we are to see this film, we must see it all, and deal with it all." And in many ways, he's right. The second part is important as well, historically, in understanding how Griffith and the majority of America thought about the whole thing, even in 1915. While making the film, he genuinely believed in those sentiments, and that's why he even adapted the book. he didn't think it was racist, and if he didn't believe that most people in his country thought this way, he wouldn't have made such a large scale epic. People got the spark they required and the second emergence of KKK occurred; it just goes to prove that he wasn't one of the few people who thought so.
After he became aware of the nature of his themes, he's been quite apologetic, and gave us a grand apology cum love letter in 'Intolerance'. So, despite all the racist views of the film's second half, Griffith's technical wizardry can't be ignored.
It's an 8 for the first part, and 4 for the second. So, that makes it a 6 (on 10) for the entire film.