M, 141 minutes
Four Stars
Review by © Jane Freebury
At the start of this impressive, immersive study of race relations in the United States, an African American youth nips into a convenience store at night. Leaving with a few purchases, he slips his hoodie over his head and continues to chat on his mobile phone as he, and we, become aware of a car following him stealthily around the block. It invokes a sense of foreboding.
The random murder that followed in Florida in 2012 is confirmed further into the narrative. The death of Trayvon Martin prompted an acclaimed African American writer, Isabel Wilkerson, to embark on a journey after the event, looking into the way its perpetrator was dealt with by the American justice system. A brief clip of Barack Obama reminds us he said that it could have been him. It was of course well into his presidency, and it created #Black Lives Matter.
Isabel Wilkerson, the subject of this biopic, was persuaded to write her book, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, when she heard a tape of the 17-year-old’s final moments. A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and academic, she is today also an influential author. Caste is the foundation for this new film from Ava DuVernay, who came to prominence for her civil rights drama Selma. She was the first African American female director to be nominated for a Golden Globe.
Despite the omnibus approach, the different threads in different timeframes are managed with fluency and skill
With Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in the lead role, Origin evolves as a quest for greater insight into the racism that still scars and distorts American life, many generations after its brutal beginnings. The actor’s warm and dignified performance secures the wide-ranging and potentially unwieldy narrative that covers both her life, and the characters that she reads about while conducting her research.
These include the two anthropologist couples who went undercover in the Deep South during the 1930s, a German couple whose life together is cut short by the Holocaust, and the Nazi strategists who discussed how American race laws might be applied in their own regime. There is also a story within the story of an African American child in a pool segregation incident from 1951. Despite this omnibus approach, writer-director DuVernay has managed all these different threads in different timeframes with fluency and skill.
On another level, Origin is also a love story, about her marriage to white American man Brett Hamilton (John Bernthal). His untimely death occurred at around the same time as the death of Wilkerson’s beloved mother, Ruby (Emily Yancy), and her cousin, Marion (Niecy Nash).
Intertwined with her personal tragedies, was Lisa’s struggle to in some way make sense of the racism that has blighted America for many generations. In her research, the journey took her to Germany in an effort to understand how the Holocaust could have occurred, and then on to India, to study the plight of the Dalits, formerly known as Untouchables.
The view that caste explained the systemic oppression was not new, but it is powerful
These visits set the scene for some fascinating discussions with people in those countries, particularly during her time in Germany. Over dinner with German hosts, her views that argue for an appreciation of the similarities between the experience of racism in America and the racism that produced the Holocaust are dismissed sharply by one of her hosts in a riveting exchange. After which Lisa settles on remaining silent though it certainly didn’t deter her from following through with her synthesising perspective.
Her view that caste offered a far better explanation for the systemic oppression of African American people in the US was not new, but it was powerful. She argued that it wasn’t possible to explain the events that occurred in pre-WWII Germany or the ongoing repression in India (societies where it wasn’t possible to clearly distinguish Jewish people or Dalits from others in the population) simply in terms of race. Caste with its systematic oppression of one people by another, seemed to explain it comprehensively.
Another scene that stays with me was Lisa’s conversation with a tradesman investigating a leak at her late mother’s house. She is open and friendly while he, wearing a red MAGA cap, is closed and perhaps incipiently hostile until he ultimately relents and decides to help her. While some emotional scenes are too heavily underlined by the musical score, the tension in an occasional moment like this leaves the characters with a bit of room to surprise us.
First published in the Canberra Times on 5 April 2024. Rotten Tomatoes also publishes Jane’s reviews