This is personal.Īnd let’s face it: it’s not often we get to see a successful Black female intellectual as the main character in a movie. who don’t just live with the weight of racial injustice themselves but put in the work to understand and expose our collective trauma. Through its no-holds-barred center-staging of the writer’s journey, “Origin” reminds us of the gratitude we owe Wilkerson and others before her - including W.E.B. Related article Opinion: The Civil War mythology that’s become a talking point of the 2024 campaign Ultima_Gaina/iStock Editorial/Getty Images/File Drawing hard-hitting depictions of key historical moments and present-day encounters, DuVernay faithfully tells Wilkerson’s story, while the author’s on-screen character, portrayed by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, relates the story of our country’s faulty foundations.Ĭonfederate reenactors breach a Union barricade during a staging of Battle of Gettysburg. We follow Wilkerson’s travels as she dissects caste, comparing and connecting its devastating impact on those it places at the bottom of the social hierarchy: Dalits (previously known as “untouchables”) in India, Jews in Nazi Germany and Black people in the US.Īllowing her to be the film’s heroine helps advance the movie’s narrative. Struggling to cope with personal tragedy, Wilkerson is horrified by the audio of the 911 call that recorded Trayvon Martin’s killing and feels compelled to investigate what lies beneath racism. We need to liberate the living and their descendants.”īoldly choosing to turn Wilkerson’s non-fiction book into a biographical drama, DuVernay focuses on the writer’s journey. But we need to do more than learn about and honor the dead. Movies like this one have a crucial role to play in helping Americans confront their history. The movie “Origin, ” which opened in wide release on Friday, will leave no American viewer in any doubt that they are still living under a system designed entirely for the manufacture, justification, codification and perpetuation of hate based on skin color. What Wilkerson refers to in her book as “the false god of race” was invented by slave-owning European colonists as a convenient way of identifying at a glance who belonged to which caste - and who belonged to whom. Caste, Wilkerson says, is the system that creates subjugation. Written and directed by the exceptionally talented Ava DuVernay, the film - a masterful adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s bestselling book “ Caste: The Origins of our Discontents” - unflinchingly demonstrates that the US is indeed a racist country, and has been since its very inception.Īnd underpinning that racism is what Wilkerson refers to as a caste system so effective at preserving the domination of White people over everyone else that the Nazis were inspired by it.
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