The complexities of race relations in America is a sensitive issue to contend with. Even more so when proposing a radical theory on the wider systemic forms of oppression throughout history. That’s what Isabel Wilkerson (Aunjaune Ellis-Taylor) set out to do in her book, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, and by extension what Ava DuVernay seeks to contend with by retelling her story.
Adapting a non-fiction book to the screen is often a tricky endeavour. Film is a storytelling medium, and if the book in question doesn’t have a narrative, or a clearly defined one, then the process can be tricky, awkward and infuriating. It’s a situation that was beautifully captured in the Spike Jonze film, Adaptation, where Charlie Kaufman is portrayed by Nicolas Cage, in an idealised, semi-autobiographical story of his failure to adapt the book The Orchid Thief.
In the case of Origin, DuVernay opts to take a multi-pronged approach, following Wilkerson’s personal life throughout her travels and research into what will become her bestseller, but at the same time dramatising historical events and stories related to her by various others, and peppering things with occasional moments of dreamlike cinematic unreality. If that sounds rather cluttered and a lot, it’s because it is.
The film works best during the sequences of Wilkerson’s everyday life, as she and her husband, Brett (Jon Bernthal) tend to her ageing mother, Ruby (Emily Yance). It’s well observed and believable, and there’s an endearing chemistry and likeability to the people which only hammers home harder the emotional impact of cruel tragic events which befall them.
Equally, the film soars during the historical scenes of a Nazi party member’s romance with a young Jewish woman, and the work of Black anthropologists Allison and Elizabeth Davis, who witness and chronicle both the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany, and later the horrors of segregation in the Deep South. There’s an unadorned frankness to it all that elevates throughout these moments, never pulling punches, and frequently being shocking. Most notable is the re-enactment of the Trayvon Martin murder, which acts as a thematic opening bracket. All of which is linked together during a trip to India, where real life scholar, Dr. Suraj Yengde lectures on the plight of the Dalits, and how the Indian caste system leads to persecution and othering being normalised.
Where the film falters is in lashing these disparate aspects together. The film feel awkward as at times it’s more like a documentary, but with sudden flashes of soap-opera drama, underlined with some rather blunt dialogue, and a few genuinely hokey moments.
It’s hard to take the film quite as seriously when it descends so close to parody that it’s almost confusing. One such moment showcases a 1950s Alabama sheriff driving through an affluent white neighbourhood, to smiles, waves and cheerful music, before immediately switching to ominous thundering tones, harsh camera angles and scowls as he passes the poorer black quarters. Similarly, a moment of what should be terrifying grief, is short-circuited by Ellis-Taylor leaping in slow-motion over a bed in a manner that looks like pure slapstick comedy.
This is a similar problem to the tonal shallowness that beset much of DuVernay’s previous film, A Wrinkle in Time, and while the film is commendable in trying to portray some situations, the methods at times feel confused.
A scene where Nick Offerman turns up as a belligerent MAGA hat-wearing plumber firmly establishes the time and setting of the movie, but the scene itself doesn’t really add much to ongoing events of the film, and more bizarrely is only one of several scenes where the fairly affluent Wilkerson has some confrontation with a blue collar white man. Yet, the financial and class dynamic never figures into the film’s argument, and overall concept of caste being the fundamental form of societal bigotry.
All of which highlights a further issue, that while the film is depicting the writing of Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, it’s not willing to contend with or interrogate any of the concept in the book, but rather simply lists them; literally doing so towards the end of the film in a somewhat flat manner, with Ellis-Taylor exaggeratedly scrawling them on a whiteboard. It has the effect of making the whole feel condescending rather than educating. Making the overall experience somewhat frustrating to watch, as the film feels more like a 100 minute educational advert for the book, rather than a film documenting the process, or indeed Wilkerson’s life.
Ultimately, as the film itself portrays; and as Adaptation showed far better, the writing process is a fairly unglamorous one. At times it’s downright boring. All of which leaves you with the distinct feeling that while Origin wasn’t a bad film, in some cases it might be better just sticking to the book that inspired the movie.
In cinemas nationwide now