Yep. This isn't just getting it wrong, as movies often do. This isn't having to combine characters or chisel away a few facts for dramatic coherence.
This is pure racist propaganda. It turns a brutal elite group of warriors charged with doing their empire's dirty work where imperialism and slavery were concerned into brave and heroic superstars. It completely flips the truth and facts of the period to maintain the 'all White Westerners are Nazis, all others exceed Jesus in superior virtue' narrative of the modern Left. In so doing, it appears to rewrite the actual history of the subject in a way that would make D.W. Griffith blush.
Absurd comparison. This film lacks the artistry that "Birth of a Nation" possesses. For all his ideological sins, D.W. Griffith was a brilliant filmmaker who revolutionized the way movies were made. He pioneered modern methods of associative editing and cross-cutting. There's no comparing his mastery of aesthetics in "Birth of a Nation" to this mess. (Gina Prince-Bythewood, funnily enough, is a talented filmmaker, but "The Woman King" is a really, really bad movie.)
ReplyDeleteFair point. And perhaps not even a comparison regarding the racism. After all, Griffith merely portrays the KKK in a positive light. He doesn't say there was no KKK. This thing literally takes the Africans fighting to keep the slave trade alive and changes the facts, making them the bold opponents of slavery, while making the white Europeans, by then many of whom were against the slave trade, into the villains. It would be more akin to a movie where Hitler and Himmler were the brave heroes, sacrificing themselves to save Jews from evil Africans.
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