Stray Thoughts on Rebirth of a Nation

I finally manged to catch the theatrical version of Paul D. Miller / DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation at MOMA last night and at the end of the day it seems like a missed opportunity for Miller. To be fair I'm going to assume that the performance piece is significantly more free and interesting then the stultified for dvd version we saw. The inane voice over and ham-fisted introduction and prologue sections really hurt the overall product. The narrator is either pointing out what is blatantly obvious or making intelligence generalities or overreaching inferences. The project was to remix the original silent film in order to draw out and deconstruct the racial supremacist imagery and ideology embedded in it. If you need to explain to the viewer what they are seeing, or draw out connections to the present day, then it project has failed and should have been taken back to the editing room. I'm not certain Miller's film isn't capable of standing on its own feet, it probably is, but in this presentation it's never given the chance.

Once you get through the intro and tune out the intermittent narration things get better. The score, the work of Spooky in collaboration with Kronos Quartet is pretty haunting and subtle. It works best when it is counteracting the action on the screen, creating moments of still anticipation where there would be dramatic builds and feelings of emotionless syncopated progression where the original film would have crescendos. That said, I really wanted there would be more slicing, dicing and re-contextualizing of the original film. I wanted further use of the digital effects which appear so sparingly and with such little conviction or courage as to render themselves ineffective. It's only in the climatic five or so minutes that the "DJ as Director" lets rip and begins using focusing and perspective effect in connection with the inserted digital graph lines to deconstruct the nuanced textures of race and power at play within the scenes. If the entire piece was worked over in this manner I think it would be much more provocative and insightful. Instead the film reads more like a paired down and re-scored version of the original than a insight fueling deconstruction.

What's most interesting to me about Griffith's original Birth of a Nation is that it's really the first American movie blockbuster. the film is encoded in to the very core DNA of the US Summer Blockbuster and main stream film as a whole. Griffith's stylistic tricks used to elicit extremes of emotion in large audiences are part of movie history and I don't believe you can separate those theatrical devices from the sexist, racist and classist ideologies that underpin the film. I wish I had and encyclopedic knowledge of film, because I'm certain one could trace many of the racially charged shots in Griffith's film throughout the history of movies. That idiotic/menacing black-faced grin repeated endlessly throughout Hollywood's cannon right up to the present day. I think that would be more telling, more informative to the present moment, than the timid deconstruction that has ended up on the Rebirth DVD.