With her latest film “Origin” Ava DuVernay proves that her gifts as a filmmaker are only eclipsed by her valor when it comes to using cinema as a medium to reflect complex elements of American history. The life and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Isabel Wilkerson served as the framework for a well-crafted story that demonstrates the toll oppression and bigotry have taken on society.
In “Origin,” which was released nationwide on Friday, January 19, DuVernay takes creative liberties and makes it clear that it is a fiction inspired by Wilkerson’s life and work. In doing so, she flexes her talent as a screenwriter by syphoning a touching drama from the core of a book intended for social analysis. She starts the story with a tragic flashpoint that sparked both terror and ignited outrage – and birthed the Black Lives Matter movement.
This tragedy compelled Wilkerson to take a deep dive into how American history had a hand in it for the follow up to her New York Times bestseller The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. As she goes about completing the work for what became CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontents, DuVernay interweaves a touching personal narrative that gives viewers an authentic depiction of the common threads of Black womanhood through the exploration of relationships and responsibilities within Wilkerson’s orbit. She’s a bestselling author, but she is also a caregiver to her aging mother who relies on the emotional support of a dear “sister cousin.” She has a Pulitzer Prize – but her choices, expressed expectations, professional expertise, boundaries and opinions are called into question because she a Black woman.
In CASTE, Wilkerson proposes that her readers look beyond race in the examination of the systemic oppression that have been the reality for African Americans since their arrival in this country by comparing the experiences of the Jewish people in World War II Germany and the plight of the Dalits – members of the lowest social order in India. In “Origin,” DuVernay makes it clear that American racism is nothing short of an atrocity, but she doesn’t broach the subject of why.
Contrary to popular belief, ignorance and fear are not at the root of American racism – but merely byproducts. They are also scapegoats for those unwilling to acknowledge or reconcile with the fact that racism was a construct established to justify one group’s renegotiation of the terms of humanity they applied to other groups in the name of capital gain and power preservation. In all fairness to DuVernay, in doing so she made the best choice for the sake of the story due to the alignment with Wilkerson’s book.
DuVernay displays the violent “caste system” Wilkerson says is at the core of racism in America, but without pointing the finger at racists – the same tactic Wilkerson says was the secret of the Nazis success of extermination of millions of Jewish people as millions more sat idly by.
“Origin” is not for the casual movie goer. Stories within stories – and subplots that DuVernay somehow managers to write herself out of without spiraling into a tornado of convoluted muddle – require one’s undivided concentration. Isabel’s revelations that come in the form of voice over narration become cumbersome towards the end, but DuVernay snatches the audience’s attention back just in time.
The performances in “Origin” are absolutely stunning. In Isabel Wilkerson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is given the fleshy, complex and nuanced character that only an actor of her caliber can properly execute. Jon Bernthal as Isabel’s husband Brett is the on-screen pairing one never thought they needed, but will influence the expectations of every one after because of the pure chemistry that compels their unlikely, but heartfelt romance.
But the most compelling love story in Origin is not a romantic one, but the bond shared between cousins portrayed by Ellis-Taylor and Niecy Nash-Betts Marion Wilkerson. In the film, the two bear a striking resemblance to each other. And through their bond DuVernay charters new territory as far as the sacred relationships between Black women cousins. And Audra McDonald makes the most of her moment on screen as she relives the racial trauma imposed on her as a teen.
Origin is open in theaters nationwide. The film is rated PG-13 with a running time of 135 minutes.
