Onscreen statistics track the dramatic rise of incarceration numbers in the United States, from some 513,000 people in 1970 to 2.3 million today, pairing them with the widely-circulated assertion that one in three black men will go to prison in their lifetime. The 13th amendment isn’t the only numerical element driving DuVernay’s essayistic approach. By allowing forced labor for convicted criminals, the amendment enabled an angry, resentful white society to imprison newly freed slaves on minor charges - and, with time, enhance the perception of black criminality that continues to reverberate today.
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The title stems from the 13th amendment, which has been celebrated for abolishing slavery despite one troubling loophole that birthed a century and a half of persecution. biopic “Selma,” providing a sober-eyed context to the dramas they capture. “13TH” is a dense, chronological overview that fits in naturally with DuVernay’s breakout narrative feature “Middle of Nowhere,” which involves an incarcerated black man, and her Martin Luther King Jr.
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But it’s even more appropriate for DuVernay, whose career speaks with increasing volume to the challenges facing minorities today and their roots in the past. “13TH” is a natural fit for Netflix, which will find an immediate audience for this topical subject matter in homes around the country. While not the strongest filmmaking achievement of the year, it’s certainly the most relevant - a scattershot survey that consolidates some 150 years of American history to show how the country’s current problems with race didn’t happen overnight.
13TH FILM DOCUMENTARY MOVIE
Visually, the movie offers little more than the standard arrangement of talking heads, archival footage and animated visual aids, but that’s all it takes to make its incendiary statements resonate across time. The broad scope is made palatable by the consistency of its focus, and the collective anger it represents. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” to the war on drugs. DuVernay folds many historical details into an infuriating arrangement of statistics and cogent explanations for the evolution of racial bias in the United States, folding in everything from D.W. It combines the rage of Black Lives Matter and the cool intelligence of a focused dissertation. The movie tracks the criminalization of African Americans from the end of the Civil War to the present day, assailing a broken prison system and other examples of institutionalized racial bias with a measured gaze. Ava DuVernay’s documentary “13TH” has the precision of a foolproof argument underscored by decades of frustration.