First Actual Post - Within Our Gates

Following the viewing of Within our Gates I tried to figure out how exactly I received the movie. Knowing the backstory and with only one screening of the film I'm still struggling to find out how it came out in my mind's eye.

The over arcing plot was interesting, presenting a realistic human drama rather than the fantastic tale Birth of a Nation conveys. Within our Gates shows the troubles of Sylvia, who faces struggles to both her race and her identity within the nation, though this is downplayed until the ending act. The main issue I faced when watching the movie was the abundance of plot lines, some resolved and some unresolved. As someone who wishes to enter screenwriting, it does annoy me when plots become too busy or aren't resolved well. Some of the plots, such as the Larry subplot, did seem unnecessary to me and the unresolved cases of the Landry's son's fate drew attention to this problem. However this is all nitpicking and when compared to modern films Within our Gates still presents a very clear plot line and does well to maintain all the subplots. Also much could be attributed to the missing scenes in the film.

Now when compared to the movie it is directly countering, Birth of a Nation, I saw many elements that made it superior. Within our Gates developed believable characters, all of whom had their faults and vices, and didn't create a clear villain character, besides the short lived Philip Gridlestone. While BOAN made their characters around clear archetypes (ex: the Clan Members as the heroic knight figures) Within our Gates made all the characters presented balanced, with none clearly fitting a clear archetype character, which is extremely rare in cinema to see.

Overall Within our Gates was a interesting film that displayed story telling qualities that in my opinion is hard to see in even contemporary films.