Engrossing, moving look at how an important book came to be
Origin (M, 141 mins) Directed by Ava DuVernay Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett **** ½
Origin is a film of a remarkable life and of how a book came to be. Isabel Wilkerson was born in Washington, DC in 1961. Her parents had left Virginia in the 1950s, as a part of a historical mass movement of Black Americans from the southern states to the north that had begun around 1915 and continued into the 1970s. This exodus is referred to today as The Great Migration.
Wilkerson studied journalism and was, by all accounts, an extraordinary student. She gained internships at The Washington Post and L.A. Times, and by the 1990s was the Chicago bureau chief for The New York Times.
In 1994, Wilkerson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. She was the first Black woman recipient.
As a side-note, Wilkerson was one of many American journalists who argued that newspapers should replace the queasy and inaccurate term “African-American’’ with a simple, dignified “Black’’. And that when it was used as a signifier of ethnicity, Black should always be capitalised, as we do with ‘‘European’’ – and even ‘‘Kiwi’’. This usage and spelling have been accepted by The Washington Post, The New York Times and nearly all other American newspapers.
In 2010, Wilkerson published The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. She interviewed more than 1000 people and wrote the book over 15 years. The Warmth of Other Suns is today regarded as a non-fiction classic and one of the key texts in America’s understanding of itself.
In her 40s, Wilkerson retraced her parents’ journey, and moved south to settle in Maryland, near the border with Virginia, where she continued to work as a journalist and writer.
In 2012, Wilkerson was approached to write a piece on the death of Trayvon Martin. Martin was a 17 year-old student visiting his father in Florida, when he was shot and killed while walking home from a convenience store. His killer claimed self-defence.
Wilkerson began to form an outline, but concluded that the need for yet another opinion piece on race relations in the US was long-past.
What she produced, after eight years of work and research that took her to Germany and India, was an investigation into the historical roots of racism, in the US and around the world.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent stayed at the top of best-seller lists for more than a year. It received universal acclaim and was described in The New York Times as “almost certainly the keynote non-fiction book of the American century thus far’’. Whew.
Origin is director Ava DuVernay’s film of Wilkerson’s adult life – and of how Caste came to be written. It follows Wilkerson from the initial conversations and sketches that led to Caste, and then to the book’s publication and thunderous reception.
Wilkerson’s struggle to define and explain the book to herself – and to her family, colleagues and publishers – is the lens through which we view the story.
Her visits to Germany, to interview survivors and academics on the causes and legacy of the Holocaust, were foundational to the book. But it was time spent in India, with students of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar – the Dalit (‘‘Untouchable’) who rose to oversee the writing of the Indian constitution – that perhaps transformed Caste from a national to a global narrative.
DuVernay casts Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (King Richard) as Wilkerson, and allows EllisTaylor’s immense warmth and charisma to keep Origin accessible and engrossing.
Jon Bernthal (Ford v Ferrari) turns in a great shift as Wilkerson’s husband Brett. DuVernay also introduces Nick Offerman, Vera Farmiga, Connie Nielsen, Niecy Nash (Monster: The
Jeffrey Dahmer Story) and the legendary Emily Yancy (What’s So Bad About Feeling Good?) from a very deep bench of support players.
One day, there will be a documentary series inspired by the book Caste. And DuVernay, who has the extraordinary 13th on her CV already, will perhaps be the person to make it. But for now, Origin is an engrossing and occasionally very moving look at how and why the book came to be.
Telling such a vast and potentially unwieldy story in a way that remains human, entertaining and relatable is a hell of an achievement.
This film taught me things I needed to know and at one point, relating the true story of Al Bright, a 9-year-old boy from Ohio, and why he was not allowed to swim with his friends, it had me in tears.
It may well do the same for you.
Origin is in select cinemas.