Historical Fiction; Family Drama; Parable

One genre per hour of running time—that's not too bad.

First and foremost, The Birth of a Nation is a piece of historical fiction. Much of that history is manipulated and revised, of course, but that doesn't necessarily affect the film's genre classification. After all, its main focus is the Civil War and Reconstruction Era, and we look at these historical periods through the eyes of both society at large and the two (fictional) families who are affected by it.

Speaking of, this focus on la familia is an important aspect of the film. We spend the bulk of our time with the Camerons and the Stonemans, two families caught on the opposite sides of the conflict. There's romance. There's bickering. There's heartache—the whole shebang. This, in many ways, is the film's emotional backbone.

The film also contains many aspects of a parable. Its characters and situations aren't  realistic, by our count, and instead are meant to represent larger conflicts of the time. For example, the relationship between Ben Cameron and Elsie Stoneman lacks a degree of emotional complexity, but makes up for it by providing a metaphor for the relationship between the South and the North. We can apply this rule to most of the film's characters and conflicts.