‘I was exploring my own creative boundaries’
With Ava Duvernay’s Origin in cinemas, Rachael Davis hears from the director, and star Aunjanue Ellis-taylor, about the ‘radical’ ideas it presents
When filmmaker Ava Duvernay decided to make Isabel Wilkerson’s non-fiction book Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents into a biographical drama, she was met with some resistance.
“Not everyone thought it would make a great film,” explains the 51-year-old writer-director.
“I read the book and was captivated by the ideas within it … (they) were provocative, they were passionate, and they led me to interrogate my place in the world in a new way.
“I wanted to share that with as many people as possible on film.”
Through that desire, the ambitious film Origin was created – an exploration of Wilkerson’s investigation into whether racism in the United States formed an aspect of a caste system: a system of social categorisation in which people are born into a fixed social group, defined by ideas of purity, and must adhere to certain rules accordingly.
The film follows Wilkerson, played by Aunjanue Ellistaylor, as she researches and writes her book, travelling through Germany, India and the US to research the caste systems in each country’s history and see how the sociological concept might apply to racism in America.
When Ellis-taylor, who’s known for roles in The Help, The Birth Of A Nation, and King Richard – the latter of which earned her an Oscar nomination – first considered Wilkerson’s discussion of caste as applicable to racism in America, she thought that “it made a lot of sense”.
“It just was a way to consider what has happened here in this country, in a very sort of radicalised way, but it made sense,” she says.
“I think that our understanding of caste is something that we associate with Southeast Asian cultures, specifically India – we never considered it as something that is an apt descriptor for what has happened here in America.”
Duvernay presents Wilkerson’s arguments intertwined with biographical details from the writer’s own life, with Wilkerson as the central character in the film’s narrative.
“I wanted there to be a main character, and it was a creative decision,” says the director, who was the first African-american woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for best director for her 2014 Martin Luther King Jr biopic Selma, which went on to be nominated for the Oscar for best picture.
“I’ve been asked this question a lot about why not a documentary, and it puzzles me. It’s a creative expression. I’m an artist, and I am telling a story based on what I think is the best way to tell it.
“By following the author and her process of researching the book, we’re able to share the information that’s in the book in a way that’s character driven.”
“The great thing, what makes Ms Wilkerson a brilliant writer and sets her apart from just journalistic writing and academic writing, is that her writing is so intimate,” adds Ellistaylor, 55, of the woman she portrays.
“Her writing is so personal. And in her building, developing the argument for why we need to think about our social divisions in this country as caste, in every step of that she involves herself. She tells personal stories.”
Origin blends elements of documentary, biopic and narrative drama as it explores Wilkerson’s research into the applications of caste systems in societies across the globe. We see her visit Germany, to explore the workings of the Nazi regime’s antisemitism; go to India, which famously has a history of a caste system; and take a look back at America’s history in light of her learnings.
Wilkerson’s personal story – her relationship with her white husband Brett, her elderly mother Ruby, and her cousin Marion – is interspersed with vignettes of historical stories.
There’s the tale of Al Bright, a black boy in America whose Little League team won their game and celebrated with a pool party, but he was not allowed to enter the water because of the colour of his skin; the story of couple in Nazi Germany, a Nazi Party member who tries to flee the country with his Jewish partner, but she is captured and taken to a concentration camp; and scenes exploring the discrimination against the Dalit, or ‘untouchables’, who rank the lowest in India’s caste system.
“It has all kinds of different techniques in the film, historical sequences, contemporary sequences, surreal sequences,” Duvernay explains.
“I was exploring my own creative boundaries, and looking to blur the lines between what might feel like documentary, but is scripted, and what might feel like narrative, but really, you’re watching a non-actor … really play with the tools of cinema in ways that I was interested in.”
This immersive process of filmmaking meant filming internationally, giving Ellistaylor the opportunity to trace Wilkerson’s footsteps in Germany and India.
“It was wondrous to travel around the world in that way,” says the actress.
“But it’s also a testament to Ava’s filmmaking that she wants her actors, she wants her heroes, to experience things the same way her audiences do.
“So there are things that you see in the film that’s happening to me at the same time that you see it … you’re capturing me experiencing something in real time and for the first time.
“The film simply asks people to take a watch and take from it what they will.”