Year: 2023

Runtime: 135 minutes

Written and directed by: Ava DuVernay

Actors: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Myles Frost, Emily Yancy, Jon Bernthal, Connie Nielsen, Finn Wittrock, Victoria Pedretti, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Isha Blaaker, Hannah Pniewski, Matthew Zuk, Lennox Simms, Niecy Nash-Betts, Audra McDonald, Dr Suraj Yengde, Gaurav J. Pathania, Nick Offerman

By Sarah Manvel

Many movies about the creative process either fixate on the visual form the art is taking – dance, sculpture and painting are especially good for this – or they focus on the dramatic personal life of the artist, since typing is not all that amusing to watch. But “Origin” is an incredibly unusual work of art, in that it’s about how a work of art is created, and how its creator is the only person who could have created it. We learn quite a bit about the personal life of Isabel Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) but much more importantly we learn how to understand the thought process that led her to write the book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” a non-fiction bestseller that took America by storm in 2020. The way in which writer-director Ava DuVernay has brought this together is surprising on two levels. Firstly, that a movie about a non-fiction book with such a dark and complex thesis was made at all. And secondly, that it’s about the humanity under those ideas, with a very loudly beating heart.

The opening sequence is a re-enactment of the final minutes of the life of young Trayvon Martin (Myles Frost), whose horrible murder in 2012 cracked open something in the American psyche. Isabel is a former journalist whose first book “The Warmth of Other Suns” has been a big success, but she resists a plea from a former editor to write about Mr Martin as she is trying to protect her time for bigger projects. At the moment, this is moving her mother Ruby (Emily Yancy) into a nursing home, and to spend less time travelling away from her lovely, and white, husband Brett (Jon Bernthal). The years flow by as Isabel does her work of considering how societies function and how something like what happens to Mr Martin could be even possible. On a trip to Berlin she has a dinner with some academic colleagues during which she discusses the parallels between American slavery and the Holocaust, only to be politely and carefully challenged by a woman named Sabine (Connie Nielsen). But this difficult conversation shifts something in Isabel’s thinking, as she comes to believe that race was not the actual driver behind American racism as codified under Jim Crow. It’s actually the caste system as seen in India, where a carefully coded and viciously maintained societal network enables some people to succeed because other people, due to accident of birth, will always, always fail. 

Three historical (and broadly true) sequences from Isabel’s research illustrate this thesis. Firstly, the love story in 1930s Germany between a young German man (Finn Wittrock) and a Jewish woman (Victoria Pedretti), which illustrates the consequences for people falling in love outside the strictly delineated caste boundaries of their society. Secondly, the anthropological work of two married couples, Elizabeth and Allison Davis (Jasmine Cephas Jones and Isha Blaaker) and Mary and Burleigh Gardner (Hannah Pniewski and Matthew Zuk), who moved to Mississippi in the 1940s to explore its segregated society from both sides of its divide and whose work demonstrated how hard the society had to work in order to keep its boundaries in place. And thirdly, the story of a 1950s Little League team which had but one black player (Lennox Simms) and how he was treated the day the boys were taken to a whites-only swimming pool. Spencer Averick’s editing weaves the stories together as organic aspects of Isabel’s research as she considers how people are allowed to find their place in caste-ridden societies, and how caste impacts every choice people are allowed to make. Where you can live, what work you can do, the kind of fun you can have, and who you can love: according to Isabel, caste controls all of it.

Niecy Nash-Betts, as Isabel’s cousin Marion, and Audra McDonald, as Isabel’s friend/research subject Miss, elevate every moment they both spend onscreen, as is their specialty. But it’s a trip Isabel takes alongside Dr. Suraj Yengde, playing himself as a global expert on caste in India, where the impact of her work snaps into fullest focus. Dr Yengde’s telling of the life story of Dr B. R. Ambedkar (Gaurav J. Pathania as an adult), who led the drafting of the Indian constitution despite being from an ‘untouchable’ caste clicks Isabel’s thoughts about her American experiences, and those of her family, into vivid light, which is reflected in Matthew J. Lloyd’s unusually crisp cinematography, even on subject matters which are hard to see. 

It’s equally hard to see who other than Ms DuVernay could have made this film. Her work has been broadly focused on the black American experience, whether in documentary or fictional form, and this fictionalised telling of a true story is the kind of hybrid she pulls off expertly, centered on a remarkable performance by Ms Ellis-Taylor that hardly feels like acting, it’s so thoughtful. But it’s not an easy sell, an academic movie about ideas belonging to a middle-aged woman – not her sex life, not a traumatic childhood, but her ideas. Our ideas are indeed all we have, but it also has to be admitted the film does sometimes tip dangerously into feeling like homework, or what was once called ‘spinach cinema’ – a movie you watch not for fun but from the sense it’s good for you.

However. The importance of Nick Offerman’s small part is the core of the film. It has been made now, and could have been made only now, because America is at a tipping point in its politics. There is a very real fear that the horrors of 1930s Germany might soon be felt on American soil. That’s in addition to the homegrown horrors, of course. Therefore the fact that this movie has been made is an act of defiance and screaming rebellion in its assertion of American humanity no matter what evils might be ready to be unleashed. It may well be the feared future might not come to pass this election year, in which case this movie may well vanish, unappreciated and unnecessary. Or this movie may well be the last will and testament of a certain kind of American life and and American freedom. Either way its importance is palpable, and the pleasure in watching something so well made very easily helps the medicine go down.