Uncomfortable and offensive film which is nevertheless an extremely important milestone in the history of film-making

Rating: 7/10 (12 March 2016)

When you watch this film for the first time, you have a strange feeling of rooting for the "wrong" people, and you may end up rooting for none at all by the end of it.
This is the strange thing about the film famous for being one of the most groundbreaking films ever made and infamous for its blatantly racist storyline and glorification of the Ku Klux Klan.
It's an uncomfortable film to sit through for the vast majority of modern audiences, especially the last hour. What can be said, however, is that pioneering, and now legendary, film-maker D. W. Griffith managed to create a film of epic proportions with a complex storyline and a vast array of characters at a time when most film- making techniques used today were either non-existent or newly developed. The film initiated huge developments in the film industry and it can be argued that a number of later masterpieces would likely never have been made had this not existed.
The film features the classic partnership between Griffith and legendary actress Lillian Gish whose performance in the lead role of Elsie Stoneman, the daughter of abolitionist Austin Stoneman, shines brightly throughout the film. Gish' expressions are second to none other and, like in several of Griffith's other films, she is the key stone of the viewing experience. In comparison, the rest of the cast largely provide acceptable to mediocre performances.
The central conflict of the story is the American Civil War and the following reconstruction period. It follows the life of two families, Stoneman and Cameron, residing in the North and South respectively. The film is based on a novel and associated play "The Clansman" by Thomas Dixon, Jr. The original story also featured the controversial (the NAACP heavily criticised it at the time) depiction of black people, and the film uses a number of (white) actors in blackface portraying happy slaves dancing and behaving somewhat primitively. It even goes as far as featuring a black man sexually intimidating a white woman resulting in her death and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Speaking of KKK, the extremist group are portrayed as the saviours of white American society crushing the totalitarian black regime, which is what the black militia, led by the psychopathic character of Silas Lynch, is presented as.
Of course you can dwell by the fact that the film is highly offensive and that it almost single-handedly managed to spark a second wave of success for the KKK who used it for promotion and recruiting for several decades. But the fact of the matter is that "The Birth of a Nation" is one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time and one of the great milestones of film history (and Griffith went on to produce a handful of great and powerful movies in the following years). Furthermore, the story itself may serve as a reminder that the level of equality has improved with time, but at the same time we still have a way to go. It definitely isn't a waste of time to watch it, no matter how infuriating it is.