Telling the true story of a slave uprising in Virginia in 1831, Nate Parker stars in his directorial debut, The Birth of a Nation, in which Nat Turner, a slave and preacher, fights back at his masters, writes Grace Kinsey.

As actor, writer and director, Nate Parker took on an ambitious project in The Birth of a Nation and despite initial promise, Fox Searchlight bought the rights to the film at 2016's Sundance Film Festvial for a record-breaking $17.5 million, I suspect the film's reception won't have done wonders for Parker's ego.

Parker's debut has been criticised for its lack of sensitivity and subtlety and for its pretentious nature.

I agree that the film is rather heavy-handed, relying on flinch-making violence to depict the despicably inhumane treatment slaves suffered.

On the other hand, scenes that some critics have called pretentious, I would perhaps describe as stylish.

In particular, I found a montage showing executed slaves hanging quietly by their necks haunting and far more effective than scenes of extreme violence.

Similarly, the brutality of slave labour is successfully implied through shots of endless cotton fields.

However, all this is by the by because there is one huge problem in The Birth of a Nation, it is all about men.

It is not just on principle that this bothers me.

Even if you argue that black women did not play an active role in the 1831 uprising, were they not also enslaved and degraded?

But even regardless of that, in Parker's adaptation of the historical events in Virginia, by its nature as a dramatisation, there is more than enough room for female characters, such as Nat's wife Cherry Ann, to be developed.

Unfortunately though, women only feature in The Birth of A Nation in relation to male characters, as mothers, rape victims, lovers or damsels in distress.

They only speak to talk about the pride great men like Nat stir up inside them; they are merely the recipients of acts of great chivalry and martyrdom carried out by men.

For example, having been raped and disfigured by a group of white men, Cherry lies in her sickbed and is visited by her husband who tells her nobly that he must go and fight.

“If the Lord has called you to fight, you fight. You fight for me” she whimpered feebly and Nat marched off to fight a bloody battle, the point at which the gradually increasing tension of pure masculinity finally comes to an explosive head.

2/5