Champions of actor and filmmaker Nate Parker — including Spike Lee, who is “presenting” Parker’s sophomore effort, “American Skin” and promoting it in its controversial premiere slot at the Venice Film Festival — would rather that we talk about his work rather than about allegations from an incident that took place decades ago.
So, let’s talk about the work: “American Skin” is a clunky, heavy-handed film that takes a pressing contemporary issue and flattens it under two genres the writer-director seems ill-equipped to handle — the mockumentary and the courtroom drama.
Is the shooting of unarmed black and brown people by police officers, who then go unpunished, a pressing issue? Absolutely. Does Parker address this issue with skill or subtlety or urgency or competence? Barely.
As camouflage for what appears to be a fairly low-budget production, Parker frames the movie as being a film-student project; what we are ostensibly watching is footage shot by Jordin (Shane Paul McGhie, “What Men Want”), who is making a documentary about Lincoln Jefferson (Parker), an Iraq vet whose 14-year-old son was shot a year earlier during a traffic stop. (The car-cam and body-cam footage of the shooting yields the most powerful moments of “American Skin.”)
Jordin follows Lincoln and his estranged wife Tayana (Milauna Jackson, “How to Get Away With Murder”) to the courthouse for the results of the grand jury investigation of Mike Randall (Beau Knapp, “Seven Seconds”), the officer who shot their son; Randall is exonerated and reinstated, leading to riots. Linc turns to his army buddy Derwood (Omari Hardwick) and other friends for help, and before Jordin and his crew know what’s going on, the students are filming a hostage situation at a police station, one in which Lincoln plans to put Randall on trial for the death of his child.
There’s certainly an idea for a movie here, but it’s one that’s undercut at nearly every turn, from the straw-man/mouthpiece arguments Parker’s script puts into the mouths of most of the characters (including policemen and convicts alike) to the film’s periodic abandonment of the student-footage gimmick. (Jordin winds up delivering a lengthy monologue — during which, yes, he utters the film’s title — and by the end of it, there are have been far more camera angles than there supposedly are cameras in the room.)
One of the cringiest moments of Parker’s directorial debut, “The Birth of a Nation,” involved playing Nina Simone’s “Strange Fruit” over footage of lynched men, as though the visual weren’t horrifying enough on its own, or as if matching that song to that footage wasn’t redundant and obvious. His instinct for overplaying the musical cues continues in “American Skin,” with composer Henry Jackman (“Detective Pickachu”) bombastically underlining and italicizing moments that don’t need the extra emphasis.
The cast features some talented players (including Theo Rossi), but no one’s been given a character to play; the script offers no one any depth beyond the function they serve to the plot. Hardwick manages to make the most of what he’s been given, but the ensemble generally ranges from the passable to the downright embarrassing. (The performers playing on-camera news correspondents all seem particularly out of their depth.) The makers of “The Hate U Give” managed to tackle this difficult topic while also building characters and placing them in a specific context in a way that this film never bothers to do.
The issue of police shootings and racial profiling deserves more sensitive and more intelligent treatment than “American Skin,” which combines the worst features of a clumsy “12 Angry Men” knock-off and a direct-to-DVD thriller.
'Birth of a Nation' Scandal: Timeline of Nate Parker's Case
Ten months ago, Nate Parker's "The Birth of a Nation" -- which opens Friday -- looked like the favorite to win Best Picture at next year's Academy Awards. Then came reports that a woman who accused Parker of sexual assault 17 years ago had committed suicide in 2012. A backlash grew quickly, and commentators criticized Parker for using graphic rape scenes in his film for dramatic purposes. Here's a timeline of how the film became such a source of debate.
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August 20, 1999 -- Parker's accuser, then an 18-year-old freshman at Penn State University, said that she blacked out after having some drinks at a bar while waiting for Parker. Some time after Parker's arrival at midnight, Parker invited the accuser back to his apartment. The accuser said she remembered going in and out of consciousness, and Parker and his wrestling teammate, Jean Celestin, having sex with her. Parker testified that this sex was consensual -- and continues to assert this.
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September 1999: The accuser met with a doctor who told her she had been sexually assaulted, according to The Daily Beast. She then called Parker and recorded their conversation. Parker insisted that the sex was consensual and denied that Celestin was involved.
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October 13, 1999: The accuser reported her assault allegation to local authorities, who taped another call between her and Parker in which Parker identified Jean Celestin as the other man who had sex with her. A week later, Parker and Celestin were arrested on rape and sexual assault charges and suspended from the Penn State wrestling team, though they did not lose their scholarships. This is a picture of Parker at the 1999 NCAA championships.
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November 1999: According to the accuser's complaint against Penn State, she was subjected to continued harassment after Parker's arrest. This included Parker and Celestin hiring a private investigator to publicly expose her as the accuser, and continued bullying by Parker and his friends outside buildings where she had class, she said. She also said that she attempted suicide after requests for aid from campus officials went largely unheeded.
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2000: The accuser dropped out of Penn State after her first semester. She continued to live in State College, where she claimed that the harassment continued even though she was no longer a student.
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October 2001: Parker was cleared of all charges, while Celestin was found guilty of sexual assault. Judge Thomas Kistler sentenced Celestin to a maximum of one year in prison -- lower than the mandatory sentence of three to six years -- and delayed the sentence to give Celestin time to graduate.
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December 2001: After Celestin's delayed sentence sparked objections on campus, Penn State expelled Celestin for two years, with the possibility of receiving his degree after that period. Parker transferred to the University of Oklahoma, where he learned about Nat Turner's slave rebellion during an African-American studies course.
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2002: The accuser sued Penn State, accusing the school of failing to properly address her assault and subsequent harassment. According to Penn State student newspaper The Daily Collegian, the case was settled and the accuser received $17,500.
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2003: Celestin's appeal was denied by the Pennsylvania Superior Court, which also ordered that his sentence be increased. According to The Daily Collegian, he was given a new sentence of two to four years in prison, which began the following year.
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2005: A year into his sentence, the Pennsylvania Superior Court overturned Celestin's conviction. According to The Daily Collegian, it was ruled that Celestin's defense attorney did not perform due diligence in the case and did not object to "hearsay statements" from the prosecution. The district attorney elected not to retry the case, and Celestin was released.
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2012: Nate Parker's accuser committed suicide at a rehab facility by overdosing on sleeping pills. That same year, Parker starred in the Tuskegee Airmen biopic "Red Tails," the Spike Lee film "Red Hook Summer," and the crime thriller "Arbitrage," the last of which won him a supporting actor award at the African-American Film Critics Association.
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January 25, 2016: Parker released "The Birth of a Nation" at the Sundance Film Festival, with Celestin receiving story credit. The film received a standing ovation and the top jury prize at the festival. The film also set a record for the biggest sale at Sundance after Fox Searchlight purchased it for $17.5 million, and the film immediately received Oscar buzz in the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite protests.
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August 16, 2016: Variety reported the suicide of Nate Parker's accuser, who left behind a ten-year-old son. Her death certificate reportedly stated that she suffered from "PTSD due to physical and sexual abuse." "I see now that I may not have shown enough empathy even as I fought to clear my name," wrote Parker in a statement. "Empathy for the young woman and empathy for the seriousness of the situation I put myself and others in."
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September 2: "The Birth of a Nation" co-star and rape survivor Gabrielle Union wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times: "As important and ground-breaking as this film is, I cannot take these allegations lightly… Although it’s often difficult to read and understand body language, the fact that some individuals interpret the absence of a 'no' as a 'yes' is problematic at least, criminal at worst."
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September 29: Sharon Loeffler, the sister of the accuser, wrote a guest column in Variety condemning "The Birth of a Nation," particularly for using a fictional rape of Nat Turner's wife as a turning point that leads him to starting his rebellion. "I find it creepy and perverse that Parker and Celestin would put a fictional rape at the center of their film, and that Parker would portray himself as a hero avenging that rape," she wrote. "Given what happened to my sister, and how no one was held accountable for it, I find this invention self-serving and sinister, and I take it as a cruel insult to my sister’s memory."
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October 2: "60 Minutes" aired an Anderson Cooper interview with Parker in which the director was asked whether he would apologize for what happened at Penn State. "I was vindicated. I feel terrible that this woman isn’t here," Parker said. "Her family had to deal with that, but as I sit here, an apology is—no.”
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October 7: "The Birth of a Nation is released in theaters nationwide, with a protest group holding a candlelight vigil at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood in memory of the accuser.
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TheWrap looks back at the details surrounding ”Birth of a Nation“ director Nate Parker’s rape accusation at Penn State 17 years ago
Ten months ago, Nate Parker's "The Birth of a Nation" -- which opens Friday -- looked like the favorite to win Best Picture at next year's Academy Awards. Then came reports that a woman who accused Parker of sexual assault 17 years ago had committed suicide in 2012. A backlash grew quickly, and commentators criticized Parker for using graphic rape scenes in his film for dramatic purposes. Here's a timeline of how the film became such a source of debate.
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