“You’re a part of history,†Spike Lee told a sold-out screening at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday. “40 years from now you can say you were here.â€
The filmmaker’s hyperbole wan’t surprising, but the fact that he was talking about Nate Parker’s American Skin was. In 2016, Parker’s Birth of a Nation premiered at another film festival, Sundance, as an early awards contender. Then details of rape allegations from his college years resurfaced. He and his co-writing partner on the film, Jean Celestine, were charged with rape, though Parker was later acquitted and Celestine was convicted. Birth of a Nation tanked at the box office, and not much has been heard from Parker since.
That changed with American Skin, which was added to the Venice lineup as a Special Screening. Spike Lee both produced and presented the film, about a black man whose 14-year-old son is killed by a police officer. “We shot this movie in April, with some sense of urgency,†Parker told the crowd. “We needed to get this thing out there and maybe save lives.â€
Parker stars as Lincoln Jefferson (yes, Lincoln Jefferson), an ex-Marine and working-class father raising his son, K.J. After they’re pulled over late one night, Lincoln’s life is forever altered by the desperate actions of a police officer (Beau Knapp) who shoots and kills an unarmed K.J. In the wake of the tragedy, a 20-something student filmmaker, Jordin (Shane Paul McGhie), asks to follow Lincoln in his quest for legal justice. When it turns out to be in short supply, Lincoln takes a police station hostage and stages his own forced version of a trial for the offending officer. The result is a half-hearted retread of 12 Angry Men. Each character serves as a mouthpiece for Parker’s stilted script — to the point where some finish each other’s sentences as they discuss everything from race and class to education and violence in America.
Parker’s gambit about victims of a corrupt criminal-justice system more than hints at the director’s perspective on his real-life tribulations. In this way, it seems like a pointed protective decision for Lee to travel to Venice, where Parker addressed his refusal to apologize or speak about his charge and eventual acquittal for rape. ‘Three years ago I was pretty tone-deaf to the realities of certain situations that were happening in the climate,†he said. “And I’ve had a lot of time to think about that, and I’ve learned a lot from it. And being tone-deaf, there were a lot of people that were hurt in my response, in the way I approached things. I apologize to those people.â€