Review: Origin – Caste aside

Directed by Ava DuVernay
Starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Vera Farmiga, Blair Underwood

5/10

An ambitious intention with a superb leading performance are the nicest things you can say about this muddled drama. Origin seems like it should be digging deep into one of the more troubling aspects of humanity, the caste system, which explains racism and most other forms of subjugation. Yet it has no clear viewpoint, nothing truly educational or edifying, and gets caught up in its own ambitiousness.

Based on the best-selling 2020 non-fiction book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, this adaptation is mostly about the author and her journey to write such a lofty thesis. Isabel Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) is set on writing this book, as she wants to delve further than just exploring racism but into caste itself and its horrendous effects on humanity throughout history.

So we are watching a film about a piece of academic literature being researched and produced. Sounds a bit dull, but the film is audacious enough to dig into different timelines, such as Nazi Germany, as it follows a couple (one of them Jewish) on the brink of the Holocaust. There are about two other allusions to other moments in recent history like this, so the film doesn’t exactly feel like it has the most illuminating view on caste, as it never mentions any form of this prior to the 1600s.

We see the tragedies of her life as she’s writing this book. One scene of Isabel‘s grief is artfully presented and is actually very good filmmaking, filled with emotion, helped by a sombre yet inspirational score from Kris Bowers. But this scene doesn’t work because it’s so early in the film, when we hardly even knew this person who died, and we barely even know Isabel and the nature of her relationship with them. If appearing in the second or third act, it may have had more emotional resonance.

And this is emblematic of the film’s issue. Most scenes feel well directed, but the overall direction of the film is horrid. It throws together montages of various man-made atrocities in (recent) history, cutting from one to the other in the vain hopes of appearing very important, but has no actual foundation to back any of this up. It can truly come across as a misery-fest.

Ultimately, this film has an existential problem, as it’s unsatisfying watching this woman cover a very limited scope of historical injustices, especially in a film that’s so damn emotionally, narratively, and thematically inert and confused.

DAVID MORGAN-BROWN