Origin

Ava DuVernay’s Origin continues the filmmakers tendency in highlighting the African American experience. By adapting the tale of how Isabel Wilkerson wrote Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, DuVernay tackles the wider issue of caste.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is our author, Isabel Wilkerson, as the film weaves family affairs, the research process, and the contextual history into an ambitious and occasionally reflective project tackling the issue of caste in both the United States and around the world in India and Germany. Approaching the conversation of caste, a subject larger than racism, so argues Wilkerson, is a brave topic for DuVernay to tackle and one worth commending despite its muddled execution.

Across its runtime, DuVernay asks a lot of the audience. Whilst Wilkerson researches, illustrated through dramatisations recreating the moments of her study, DuVernay also requests our attention on Wilkerson’s family. However, her husband Brett (Jon Bernthal) and mother Rubye (Emily Yancy) both die early within the film’s expositionary opening act, appearing then only in flashbacks.

Yet these characters aren’t given breathing room – for a better word – to allow audiences to invest in them. We get glimmers about who they were, but each flashback weakens the weight of Wilkerson’s mourning. Worse still, Brett’s identity is defined wholly by his Judaist faith, with the film never explaining his pre-emptive death – caused by a seizure from an ongoing brain tumour – at age 46. To omit details of a character clearly of inspiration to Wilkerson feels like a missed opportunity, especially when its omission results in a character becoming defined by their religious identity.

Then, with a heavy hand, DuVernay cobbles together the narrative of Wilkerson’s writing process, opting mostly to represent her research through laboriously re-enacted sequences of Jim Crow laws, the rise of the Nazi party, the Dalits of India, the racial segregation of Al Bright (Lennox Simms), and the murder of Trayvon Martin (Myles Frost).

Perhaps one too many plates are spinning in addition to Wilkerson’s character development forming the basis of the film’s structure. Because each sequence feels cobbled together, more often than not, the points DuVernay makes are very clunky. One example is when a sheriff drives through a white community and is warmly greeted with waves. In contrast, in a black community, children run scared as the sheriff, with an intense gaze, watches them. The shift in tone is glaringly apparent, and any audience made to feel uncomfortable may instead prescribe it to the awkward filmmaking on display.

Though, to its credit, DuVernay’s talent dances across the screen when Origin slows. With its prolonged runtime shy of two-and-a-half hours, the reflexive pacing works in its favour. Especially when the cinematography, controlled by Matt Lloyd, creates poetic parallels with earlier sequences. DuVernay allowing for these pauses and reflective opportunities fits the film tackling such a heavy subject, despite the accompanying string orchestra hamming the point home and fictional reenactments wrecking the pacing.

Oddly, it’s one of the moments where Wilkerson interacts with someone of polarising views that DuVernay makes her strongest point. Wilkerson and a MAGA-hat-wearing plumber, played by Nick Offerman, acutely acknowledge how our preconceptions of others of different beliefs or castes are, in fact, deeply nuanced. In fact, when Wilkerson bonds with him, expressing loss and sympathy over their shared parental loss, there’s a moment of real personal connection. While DuVernay’s film has heart, it certainly lacks a consistent rhythm.

Origin is in UK cinemas from 8 March 2024.