‘Origin’ is the most important film you’ll see this year
The film from Ava DuVernay is inspired by the life and work of Isabel Wilkerson.
Months after making its debut at the Venice Film Festival, “Origin” is hitting theaters nationwide and the project written, directed, and executive produced by Ava DuVernay is a triumph on every level.
The film stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Isabel Wilkerson whose book, “Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents” inspired DuVernay’s unique offering that doesn’t fit squarely into one genre.
While Wilkerson’s work is rooted in investigative journalism that attempts to connect the dots of human subjugation across human history, drawing lines between the Holocaust and the Transatlantic slave trade and from Jim Crow to the murder of Trayvon Martin, the film is as moving and relatable as it is enlightening.
The subject matter of Wilkerson’s work, which she fervently pursued throughout her grieving process is immediately intimidating in size and span. Attempting to tackle the origin of hatred and subjugation, to find a common thread in the most despicable corners of our existence is somehow accomplished by illuminating the origin of what makes us all human: love and grief.
Love and grief are the two things that change a person on a cellular level. Anyone born at any time in any place in the world can relate to what it means to love someone and what it means to lose someone they love. This film exquisitely highlights how those two elements connect us all.
Connection is a threat to the systems that intend to keep people divided and benefit from our ability to place more value on one kind of life over another, one race, or religion, or country, or gender deemed more or less deserving of freedom, safety, or even existence.
As we watch Wilkerson wade through the grief of her losses by trekking the globe in search for answers, we see snapshots of history, moments in time that mirror each other across centuries and continents. We watch as George Zimmerman hunts down Martin, narrated by real-life audio of the incident DuVernay pieced together. We see slaves chained like chattel on a ship to be sold into slavery, we see Jewish families torn apart and murdered in concentration camps and we see the how and the why of it all at once.
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Whether analyzing what led to the extermination of millions of innocent lives in Nazi Germany or the extermination of one single life in Sanford, Florida, the root cause is the same — and that’s a remarkable revelation. Even more remarkable is what can happen if people start realizing the ways in which they participate and perpetuate a system they think they have nothing to do with.
Ahead of a particularly perilous election in this country and an even more precarious time across the globe, the themes examined in “Origin” are urgent and necessary.
What can be done with this discovery and how can it change the way we treat each other and move forward in a world that seems to be more divided than ever? Perhaps we can create and consume art like this that inspires conversations and illuminates realities about the ways in which we are all indisputably linked and illuminates the reality that no matter who or what is responsible for wrecking this house we call our world, we all must live in it now.
“Origin” is in select theaters now.
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