‘Origin’ is an adaptation of an American nonfiction book that suggests racial stratification in the United States is best understood as a caste system.
In 2020, spurred by the murder of Trayvon Martin, journalist and award-winning author Isabel Wilkerson released a book titled, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. It describes racism in the United States as an aspect of a caste system — a society-wide system of social stratification characterized by notions of hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, and purity — and uses India and Nazi Germany as more overt, non-U.S. examples of its impact. In Origin, Ava DuVernay attempts to bring Wilkerson’s ideas and revelations to the big screen and a wider audience.
Isabel (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) was a prominent voice among journalists and academics, having become the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1994. After Martin is stalked and killed in his own suburban neighbourhood, she is approached by a former colleague to write an article about the role racism played in the young man’s murder. However, life gets in the way, as well as her own feelings that what is happening in America runs deeper and calling it “racism” is too simple. So Isabel embarks on a multi-year journey in which she explores and defines the presence and impact of a caste system in the United States.
While this is a very complex issue, Wilkerson undertook the task of explaining it in a way that was clear and uncomplicated enough that anyone could understand it. Hence, DuVernay applies her approach in the film to describe the same concepts. It uses the Holocaust and still-present Indian caste system as examples and points of comparison to American slavery, Jim Crow laws and social hierarchies. That’s not to say the movie doesn’t get a little convoluted at times, but it is constructed with widespread comprehension in mind. One of the issues that may have muffled the message is the filmmaker’s commitment to following the book’s eight “pillars of caste” in the movie, which somewhat fractures the narrative and causes some abruptness as it forces the shift from one pillar to the next.
Nonetheless, Isabel’s thesis is a thought-provoking lens by which to view America’s past and present, and it required a strong performance to visually convey the provocative theory. Ellis-Taylor is able to present Wilkerson’s work in a manner that is stimulating and convincing, while also portraying the emotional hardships that surrounded the book and its research. Just as Isabel has a loving support system, Ellis-Taylor is buoyed by touching performances by the rest of the cast who portray her family and the research partners that help make the ideas presented in the film tangible. The book and film draw clear lines between caste and U.S. history, hopefully inspiring broader conversations about the role of race in contemporary society that can help create a potential blueprint for the future.
Director: Ava DuVernay
Starring: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal and Niecy Nash
