Ava DuVernay emotionally expresses the misery of racism and hate.
In her first film since “A Wrinkle in Time,” writer/director Ava DuVernay makes “Origin” a poetic and truthful movie about how hated towards different races and religions is all part of racism. There’s also a system known as caste, which is the Hindu belief that represents “a social hierarchy passed down through families, and it can dictate the professions a person can work in as well as aspects of their social lives, including whom they can marry.” Although, it is said that racism isn’t the same as caste.
It’s based on the book “Caste: The Origins of Her Discontents” by journalist Isabel Wilkerson, and it uses the right emotions to represent our hatred against racism, discrimination, and whatever caste is making some people believe in.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, in her first feature role since her Oscar-nominated performance in “King Richard,” portrays Isabel Wilkerson, who wants to be inside the story of change. She tells her editor (Blair Underwood) that she doesn’t want to just narrate; she wants to be involved somehow. She’s disgusted by the racism regarding cops killing African-American people and nazism still being alive. Examples include the infamous murder of 17-year old Trayvon Martin, and the Black Lives Matter protest in Charlottesville, which resulted in neo-Nazi James Alex Fields, Jr. murdering the white woman Heather Heyer. She needs to connect everything in order to make her book important to our time.
We see Isabel narrating different stories. The first is about how the German shipyard worker August Landmesser (Finn Wittrock) turned his back on the Nazi Party, when he fell in love with the Jewish woman Irma Eckler (Victoria Pedretti), who had enough humanity and beauty inside to change his heart and mind. This was an unlawful relationship.
And then, in 1933, we meet two African-American anthropologists-Allison Davis (Isha Blaaker)and his wife Elizabeth (Jasmine Cephas Jones)-who collaborated with white scholars Burleigh (Matthew Zuk) and Mary Gardner (Hannah Pniewski) to examine the concept of hate. Of course, they still had to deal with racism and segregation in this period.
Isabel travels to Germany to get meaning of it, and then, she travels to India to meet with activist Suraj Yengde about the concept of caste.
In her own personal tragedy, Isabel’s deteriorating mother (Emily Yancy) is in a retirement home, and she loses her white husband Brett (Jon Bernthal) to a head tumor. We see her in tears, while imagining herself sleeping on a pile of leaves. These segments are emotional, but they aren’t given as much impact on the story as this unfortunate ongoing problem. In fact, they tend to come and go, as if they weren’t crucial to Isabel’s story. But then, I guess this movie isn’t really supposed to be about her, but rather this ongoing problem.
“Origin” isn’t perfect in terms of its family subplots, but it is perfect in moving you with a lot of emotional weight regarding hated toward various groups of people. History has a way of repeating itself and it’s very sad, and DuVernay uses this movie and the real life book to help fight against it, and she also casts Ellis in a fine performance as the journalist trying put her voice in this important subject matter. Listen to her voice and acknowledge her words. And you also get a fine cameo from Audra McDonald as Miss Hale, who was accused of disrespecting her principal when he asked what her real first name was, and then pressured based on her race.
The opening line for “The Departed” was: “I don’t want to be a product of my environment; I want my environment to be a product of me. That was said by a sadist, racist gangster. But if I said this, then the world would be a better place without racism or hate of any kind. Unfortunately, we still live in this world, but we do everything we can to change that. “Origin” should be a wake-up call, especially with Ellis-Taylor’ acting and DuVernay’s direction.
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