The Birth of a Nation: the story that Nate Parker’s film intends to tell is one of immense power and sadness, more so for the reflections on the sort of society that allows things to be the way portrayed than for anything distinctive about the story itself, or the way it’s told. No matter how much one wants to be engaged, the characters and their journeys are uninteresting and inorganic (that it’s inspired by real events shows how flawed the writing is). Acting in general (particularly Nate Parker) is solid but far from memorable. The same goes for the technical aspects: the period reconstruction is correctly captured by Elliot Davis’s camerawork, but there’s no striking imagery to be found.