Consider--it's 90 years old!

Rating: 7/10 (3 October 2005)

As I read these comments on this most controversial film, what is coming across is a surfeit of emotion that any film rarely engenders. I wonder if any of our modern films will be able to evoke such passionate response 90 years from now and the fact is, I think not. Yes, the film is racist. Yes, the film is a watershed for cinema. And no matter what you think of it, it's still got people stirred up, ready to scream and yell and be appalled, disgusted, outraged, etc. Can there be any doubt as to its greatness if it still has such a life today? Its greatness certainly doesn't lie in its subject matter, but in the fact that this silent film can provoke such reactions in a generation weaned on computer graphic images, a generation that views the silents much as they view watching a parade of fossils drift by. I am literally stunned by the power of a piece of film to move so many so long after it came into the world. Perhaps its greatest lesson is the impact films have on us and our society and how powerful those moving images can really be. Something tells me that 90 more years will go by and this message board--if it's still here--will be still be getting impassioned opinions from those who have just seen Birth of a Nation. My word--what immortality!