Very little is known about Nat Turner, the black slave in Virginia’s Southampton County who led a revolt by more than 50 other black slaves in August 1831. Over two days they slaughtered 57 white men, women, and children, and after the rebellion was suppressed, 60 to 80 slaves were summarily executed and mutilated. As one historian notes in Charles Burnett’s hour-long TV documentary, Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property (2003), screening Sunday at the DuSable Museum of African American History, we have precise information about Turner’s victims but know almost nothing about the slaughtered blacks.
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This is what’s daring about Nat Turner—it doesn’t attempt to persuade us that any of these separate versions of Turner is true. It’s interested only in showing us where each came from. So the artificiality is deliberate when Tom Nowicki, playing Gray, turns to the camera to address us directly, while the great Carl Lumbly (who also played the title role in Nightjohn, another Burnett film about slavery) is visible as Turner in the jail cell behind him. Equally deliberate is the sequence in which actor Patrick Waller plays gently with a cat to illustrate the softening in Stowe’s fictional depiction of Turner. Viewers have to suspend judgment and understand that whatever conclusions they ultimately draw say more about them than about Turner.
Ultimately Burnett offers a remarkable gift: an intelligent sense of relativity. As Woodard’s narration puts it, “For a nation unable to come to terms with the legacy of slavery, Nat Turner remains a troublesome property.”
There’s no scientific or humanist motive for Farmer’s dream—it’s strictly personal wish fulfillment. This is the basis of the mythical potency the movie aims for and asks us to endorse, a celebration of the same innocent lunacy that often gets us Americans into trouble—as it has, for instance, in Iraq. “Failure isn’t an option,” a mantra George Bush has offered as justification for escalating the war, could serve as Farmer’s motto. The value of his dream and its potential for destruction are irrelevant. Refusing to accept defeat is all that matters—at least if you’re the designated good guy.
Directed by Charles Burnett
Written by Burnett, Frank Christopher, and Kenneth S. Greenberg
With Carl Lumbly, Tom Nowicki, Tommy Hicks, James Opher, William Styron, Eric Foner, Mary Kemp Davis, Ossie Davis, Ekewueme Michael Thelwell, and Burnett
The Astronaut Farmer • (worthless)
Directed by Michael Polish
Written by Mark and Michael Polish
With Billy Bob Thornton, Virginia Madsen, Bruce Dern, Max Thieriot, Tim Blake Nelson, Bruce Willis, Kiersten Warren, and Richard Edson
