Movie Review: 'Origin'

Origin (2024)

Directed by Ava Duvernay

Written by Ava Duvernay

Starring Anjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Isha Blaaker

Release Date January 25th, 2024

Published January 25th, 2024

Origin is a big project. Adapting a non-fiction story tracking the origin of discrimination via the history of the caste system worldwide, is not an easy task. It's a roiling beast of a project that director Ava Duvernay tackles with trademark empathy and artistry. The book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, a bestseller for writer Isabel Wilkerson, is a deeply academic, research heavy effort that is far from the most natural book to be turned into a dramatic feature film. Director Ava Duvernay had to give a dramatic shape to the story and she found that shape in the author's life story.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor stars in Origin as Isabel Wilkerson, an author struggling with the idea for her next book. She wants to chart the origin of racism in America but her research slowly takes her in a new direction. What she finds is that racism isn't as simple as people hating other people for looking different, though that is a big part of it. Rather, the true roots of racism are often economic in nature. The need for a class of people who exist to do the work that others don't wish to do leads the owning class to create a caste system in which particular members of a culture are chosen to be that class of people who will perform tasks.

Leaders in these cultures quickly realized that they could create the workers they needed by exploiting racial and religious differences. Demonizing people for the color of their skin or by the difference in their religious beliefs proved to be an effective way to find a cheap, pliable workforce, groups of people who have no option but to accept poor treatment, low or no wages, and terrible working conditions, just for the chance to survive. Thus, confronting the history of discrimination required more than overcoming a specific prejudice based on color, it requires dismantling economic systems that have been constructed over hundreds of years that thrived off of this forced labor based on discrimination.

As you can clearly glean from that description, this is not the most tangible story for a film drama. So, Ava Duvernay began incorporating elements of Isabel Wilkerson's personal life into a narrative that surrounds her trips around the world to research caste systems. In her home life, Wilkerson met and married a white man, Bret Hamilton (Jon Bernthal). Bret died in the midst of Isabel beginning work on her book. The grief over this loss and memories of how the couple navigated the reactions to their marriage inform the work that Wilkerson puts into her book.

The look of Origin is unique and fitting for the story being told. The film has a hazy quality that serves to marry the modern scenes of Wilkerson working on her book, traveling the world, and dealing with the loss of her husband, to flashbacks to stories that are part of her book, stories from the deep south during the early days of the Civil Rights movement and scenes set in the past in India, a strong example of the creation of a caste system that was fully intentional and beyond the scope of racial differences. It's a bold directorial choice and it works for the story that Ava Duvernay is telling in Origin.

If you're like me and you've been following the career of Aujanue Ellis-Taylor, then you are not surprised that her performance is flawless. Ellis-Taylor is the anchor of this expansive, epic story that is attempting to chart the roots of discrimination dating back over a century while also telling a human story about a woman struggling with grief and the weight of a project that will come to define her career. It's a story that requires an actress of tremendous range and expressiveness and Ellis-Taylor more than meets the challenge. It's a remarkable performance in a truly remarkable movie.

Find my archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Find my modern review archive on my Vocal Profile, linked here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about movies on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. If you have enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing on Vocal. If you'd like to support my writing, you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one-time tip. Thanks!