Ava DuVernay, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor talk grief, love at ‘Origin’ screening
The director and actress were joined by moderator Dr. Kenya Davis during a Q&A about the film.
Filmmaker Ava DuVernay and actress Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor opened up about exploring a wide range of emotions in their newest film, “Origin,” at a screening Saturday in Los Angeles.
The pair were joined by moderator Dr. Kenya Davis at the Museum of Tolerance, where they discussed creating the drama film and their own experiences with grief and loss during a Q&A session after the screening. DuVernay wrote, directed and produced “Origin,” a biopic based on the book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson. Ellis-Taylor stars as Wilkerson, a writer dealing with tragedy and personal loss who embarks on an international journey to learn more about the caste system and how it has impacted racial relations in America.
During Saturday’s event, DuVernay shared that “Origin” audience members came up to talk to her about loss and “their loved ones who are no longer here” after screenings in Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as in Venice, Italy, Toronto, and other places around the world.
“It astounds me that in a film with so much, it comes down to that heart space of loss,” the director said. “That was really the end that I’m hoping people have watched the film because it’s very similar to the conversation that Isabel has with the plumber. She knows intuitively in that moment, the heart space that all of us are connected by — our most vulnerable time is when we have lost someone that we love. Our molecular structure changes. … We’re not the same person we were when they were with us. We’re different because they aren’t with us in the same way. And so, that is something that we all share. It doesn’t matter how you identify, if you’re a human being and you’ve loved someone and you’ve lost them, you’ve been changed.”
She continued, “It is a sacred space to meet in our vulnerability and to seek understanding within that space. And, oddly enough, it’s grief. That’s the entry point. I’ve tried what Isabel did in the book and in the film — never to de-escalate a situation but to talk to people about their people that they’ve lost. It’s usually very beautiful conversations because you want to [talk about your loved ones]. I want to talk about my dad. I miss him so much. If someone asked me, ‘Tell me about your father,’ that would be a thrilling conversation to me. How often are we asked about the people that we’ve lost? We don’t ask, because we don’t want to make the person sad, or we don’t quite know how to ask about it. So there’s something in this film that tries to break that open, and tries to break it open in a personal place of loss, but it’s also trying to break it open in a collective place of loss.”
Ellis-Taylor was tasked with bringing that loss to life in “Origin,” a job that would be challenging for most actors. The Academy Award nominee was able to not only perform the role but excel in it, earning rave reviews and several award nominations. Ellis-Taylor said that her standout performance was made easier by the “lovely” cast members she worked with.
“When we were filming those scenes, I was by myself,” the actress shared. “The gift that I had was the cast that Ava put together. She assembled really great actors, but in addition, she [assembled] just beautiful people. Jon Bernthal, who played Brett [Hamilton, Isabel’s husband]. Emily Yancy, who played my mother, Ruby. Niecy Nash, who is one of these just extraordinary actors that she moves in truth, and that is what I responded to when I did my scenes with her. Jon Bernthal is one of the loveliest human beings that I’ve known or that I’ve worked with. Yancy is just adorable. So when [the character Isbael] lost them, I drew from my sense memory of having this glorious time with them and grieved them a little bit. Sometimes when you saw me do those scenes, it was after they weren’t shooting anymore. They were gone for real. If they were a—holes, you know, it might have been harder, but they were lovely, lovely people. So I missed them.”
While grief and personal tragedy are major themes in the film, DuVernay wants audience members to know that “Origin” is also a movie about love. The director-producer shared that she is “proud of the love stories in the film,” which include Wilkerson’s personal story, as well as the love between Dalit workers in India, the relationship between German August Landmesser and Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman, in Nazi Germany, and the love shared between enslaved people on slave ships during the Atlantic slave trade.
“I think that there are multiple love stories in the film,” DuVernay explained. “These love stories are woven through all of the big, large caste parts of the story. So much of what we were trying to show, I think, is thought of as traumatic or tragic, but I really invite people to look at the way that it’s rendered. The way it’s rendered it’s to try to show the most humane aspects of traumatic events. To invite us to see the triumph of the human spirit experience and will in overcoming that.”
“You can’t have triumph if you never show what you’re overcoming. You can’t have a film about survival if you don’t show what you’ve survived. At the end of the film, when Isabel walks out of the house, she’s survived everything that she has seen. The house is a metaphor for what you have to do to survive. You got to fix it. You got to look in the basement, you got to patch the roof, you got to do the work. The whole film — that is what it’s supposed to symbolize. That is what I’m hoping that people feel at the end.”
“Origin” is available to watch in theaters now.
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