Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor stars as author Isabel Wilkerson in Origin. (Photos by Atsushi Nishijima/courtesy of Neon)
By Richard Ades
Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents was praised for its incisive comparison between racial repression in the U.S. and repressive systems in other countries. In particular, it looked at India’s caste system and Nazi Germany’s genocidal antisemitism.
Now writer-director Ava DuVernay has transformed that best-selling book into a semibiographical movie called Origin, which explains the challenges Wilkerson faced as she was formulating her provocative ideas. Besides facing pushback from African Americans and others who questioned her thesis, we learn, she lost several beloved members of her family.
DuVernay, who wrote the script with Wilkerson herself, apparently hopes these personal tragedies will inject enough drama into the film to prevent it from coming off as a mere lecture.
Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, right) is comforted by her husband, Brett (Jon Bernthal).
First, the bad news: It still comes off largely as a lecture despite solid acting by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (as Wilkerson) and the rest of the cast. But the good news is that the lecture imparts enough details about Wilkerson’s revolutionary thesis to be worthwhile. Those who haven’t read the book will find it enlightening, while those who have read it may see it as a useful recap.
In a nutshell, Wilkerson contends that our country’s history of repression toward Blacks—from slavery and racist laws to the recent murders of innocent African Americans such as Trayvon Martin—has much in common with other societies’ attempts to devalue certain groups and depict their members as less than human.
In India, that group is the Dalits (formerly known as the Untouchables), who often are denied educational opportunities and relegated to the most menial of jobs. In Nazi Germany, of course, that group was the Jews.
Throughout the film, historical incidents are recreated to give the victims and perpetrators of repression a human face. Among others, we meet a Black couple and a White couple who worked undercover to understand racism in the Jim Crow South. We also meet a Gentile man and a Jewish woman who fell in love in Germany during the rise of Naziism.
Nazis hold a public book burning in a scene from Origin.
Dramatically, perhaps the most effective of these recreations involves a young Black baseball player who wasn’t allowed to swim when his White teammates dropped by the local pool. Historically, the most shocking scene (for those unfamiliar with Wilkerson’s book) shows Nazi officials patterning Germany’s antisemitic laws after American laws that relegated Blacks to second-class citizenship.
In the more contemporary scenes involving Ellis-Taylor’s Wilkerson, the other major cast members include Jon Bernthal as her husband, Brett; Emily Yancy as her mother, Ruby; and Niecy Nash as her cousin, Marion.
DuVernay’s 2014 film Selma was a fascinating look at Martin Luther King and the pivotal role he played in the Civil Rights movement. The director’s new film may not be as dramatically effective, but it is every bit as illuminating.
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Origin (PG-13) can be seen in theaters nationwide.
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