Ava DuVernay’s Origin, a biopic centering around the writing process of Isabel Wilkerson’s novel Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, is a powerful, poignantly profound examination of empathy and the injustices of our world. Scored by the incomparable Kris Bowers and shot on 16mm film, the narrative also subtly addresses the significance of journalism and writing, diving deep into how vital it is to continue asking questions. It opens with the vicious murder of Trayvon Martin and ends with Wilkerson’s completed book, piecing together the hatred the world continues to recycle from one country to another.
The film isn’t easy to watch—it’s meant to show the cruelties people often shut themselves off from. We can turn off the news and take care of our mental health if it becomes too much to stomach, but it doesn’t stop the terrors from occurring. Today, right at this second, as I write this review, while I sat in the theater watching the movie, someone somewhere experienced a vicious hate crime. The ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and racist attacks in America as we gear up for yet another election—it’s never-ending. Just last year, my family lost their ancestral home in Artsakh because of another Armenian Genocide the world remained silent on. It’s happening everywhere, all at once, whether we see it or not. And for this reason, we need films like Ava DuVernay’s Origin now more than ever.
What does a film like this accomplish for those who are blissfully unaware of the injustices all over the world? What should it accomplish? In the book, Wilkerson notes: “Radical empathy, on the other hand, means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience from their perspective, not as we imagine we would feel. Radical empathy is not about you and what you think you would do in a situation you have never been in and perhaps never will. It is the kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it.”
DuVernay does something almost indescribable by taking the thesis of Wilkerson’s novel and weaving it into the film’s crux, highlighting every word through the experiences the “characters” go through. This notion of empathy stays and lingers with you long after you leave the theater, questioning how the injustices and hatred continue to govern when so much of humanity is aware of how horrifying it is. How are we allowing these things to continue to happen? How do we make it stop? What do we do to make our own empathy infectious? Where do we go to spread it?
As a film, Ava DuVernay’s Origin expertly takes viewers through different timelines while we follow other characters, based on real people, in their endeavors to radically change the oppressive communities they’re living in. The film explores the writing process of Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class while also showcasing a relationship between a Jewish woman and a German soldier during WWII while he rebels against Nazism. As we go back and forth between Isabel Wilkerson’s life and through to the past, the film also establishes the significance of confronting trauma.
Whatever DuVernay writes and directs is a feat in and of itself, but we also have to credit casting choices that consistently make her stories feel like documentaries instead of films based on actual events and people. With this, it’s important to applaud Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, whose performances were so raw and nuanced that they floored me. She brings an award-worthy performance from the moment she steps onto the screen to the very last, and it’d be abysmal not to nominate her next year. Jon Bernthal is as charming as ever. Niecy Nash continues to bring astounding range. And Jasmine Cephas Jones could do no wrong. Audra McDonald, Emily Yancy, Blair Underwood, Myles Frost, Nick Offerman, Isha Blaaker, Victoria Pedretti, Finn Wittrock, Vera Farmiga—there’s not a single miscast performer in a sea of excellent actors. Like the stunningly comforting autumnal leaves on the ground during some of the film’s most heartbreakingly vulnerable moments, the actors each shine brilliantly.
DuVernay never shies away from deliberate messages the audience should take away from brutalities Black people face. She also doesn’t sugarcoat the pains and sorrows of grief, interweaving the tragic losses Isabel Wilkerson lived through to underscore the depth of empathy humans need to understand one another. Like Wilkerson, people face tragedies day and night; thereby, framing the film through her point of view and the research process breaks down the message in a distinct manner. As a narrative that juggles quite a few arcs to piece everything together, it could’ve easily been lost in the hands of a less careful creator, but pay close attention, and DuVernay, along with the performers, lay everything bare for us.
[There’s also something to be said about how one of the best, most important films of the year has very few worldwide showings, so much so that living in a large city, I had to find one of the last available timeslots before I left for vacation. What will it take for Hollywood distributors to understand that film critics who are aware of these things shouldn’t be the only ones spreading the news?]
Ava DuVernay’s Origin is now playing in select theaters.