Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property

While we may have learned about slavery, we most likely never learned about one of the most important events: Nat Turner's rebellion. He was an enslaved black man in Virginia who led a group of other enslaved people against the slave-owning class, executing several slave-owners. Eventually caught and executed, he remained an icon of the abolitionist movement.

Charles Burnett's documentary "Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property" focuses partly on the rebellion, but also on the changing image of Turner over time. After all, how people learn history depends on the era and the teacher. The documentary features some reenactments and interviews with people (among them Ossie Davis) discussing Turner's legacy. Definitely one of the most important figures in US history.

There was a movie about Turner that got released in 2016 (I haven't seen it). I'd also like to see a movie about John Brown, who tried to free a bunch of slaves and got executed, leading to the song "John Brown's Body".

Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property (2003)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Charles Burnett directs this fascinating documentary that discusses the controversial figure Nat Turner. In 1831 Turner led a slave revolt as the men killed their slave owners as well as their wives and children. Turner was eventually hung for the crimes and many others were brutally murdered to make sure something like this never happened again.

This documentary makes it very clear that we really don't know what happened to set off this revolt and there's really not too much known about Turner. What makes this documentary so fascinating is that it takes an open and honest look at the subject and we get to hear from various sides as they discuss him and his actions. We have experts who say that Turner would be better respected had he not killed women and children. You have the other side saying that such brutality was needed.

The debate on that subject is just one of many as we also hear debates about what actually happened and what was the reason for the revolt. If you're interested in the subject matter then you should really love this documentary because it covers so much ground and best of all is the fact that it's fair and balanced, which is something missing from most films like it.

This documentary is plagued by flawed historical methodology and too much emphasis on historical re-enactment a la History Channel. The directors time would have been much better spent taking a historiographical approach instead of cheap and questionable dramatizations. Do we really care so much about Thomas Gray's veracity? The man was more than likely simply a scoundrel seeking to exploit Nat Turners's story to salvage his own self-inflicted financial bankruptcy.

I commend this documentary simply because the Nat Turner Rebellion is an event mostly forgotten today and not too many other films have been made about the man and his crusade. Using interviews and recreations, the folks replicate the events of this uprising as well as follow it from the rebellion in 1831 to the Civil War to the Civil Rights era. In other words, it puts it in a chronological context with later events and discusses its impact on them.

So where is the controversy? After all, Netflix talks about the 'controversy' concerning the rebellion. The film itself even talks about this. Unfortunately, here is where the documentary lost a bit of its momentum...at least for me. The first portion, about the rebellion and Turner, was great*. However, this was only about a third of the film and the rest was about the various interpretations and depictions of Turner. Since there is little contemporary historical data on the guy, folks have made him into all sorts of people and embellished his tale. This, to me, went on WAY too long and tried to generate controversy when instead I just wanted to hear about the events and their impact on the abolitionist movement.

*Oddly one of the interviewees seemed to place the institution of slavery and the murderous rebellion on the same moral plane..so she was apparently nuts and one of the few exceptions to the general consensus about the morality of the events.

"Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property" is a brief, one-hour documentary about the historically significant Nat Turner. It is known that he led a brief and bloody slave revolt in 1831 in South Hampton County, Virginia. What we find out from this documentary, narrated by Alfre Woodard, is that there is extremely little historic fact about Nat Turner outside of his revolt. All the books, movies, and otherwise about him that exist are all interpretive pieces. The only existing source material is the "confession" from Nat Turner given to the lawyer who interviewed him after his capture in October of 1831. Those apocryphal words have since been twisted and turned, for better or worse, into various stories about Nat Turner to suit the storyteller.

"A Troublesome Property" consists of interviews from writers, historians, actors, and activists all giving their opinions about Nat Turner and the works that exist about Nat Turner. I think this documentary is fair in that it brings together disparate opinions about the man and his final actions. I wish there was more to tell, but I'd prefer a short truth than a long lie.