FILM
BESTSELLING BOOK, MIDLEVEL MOVIE ‘Origin’ takes a bland approach to adaptation BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
I
t’s not about race; it’s about caste — the system of injustice and subjugation that persists, generation from generation, resistant to the individuals who work to defy and shatter it. So it is in Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 nonfiction study, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Released just two months after the murder of George Floyd, at a time when the U.S. racial reckoning displaced conversations of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Caste couldn’t have come at a better time. While so many searched for answers to how we got here, Wilkerson’s book didn’t just explain how we got here, she connected how so many others got here, too, and why we’re still here. Steeped in dense research, Caste may be an unusual bestseller, but it is digestible, engaging and revelatory. Wilkerson’s study links India’s ancient
social stratification with segregation in the United States, which, in turn, influenced the Nazis who engineered the holocaust in Europe. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in Origin. Photos courtesy: Neon Transforming that research into a dramatic narrative for the screen falls flat because it feels rushed and is no easy lift, which might explain obligatory. In the book, the scene why writer-director Ava DuVernay works because it illustrates how our chose not to adapt Caste for her film souls yearn to connect even though Origin but instead decided to tell the the system tries to drive us apart. story of Wilkerson writing the book. Origin opens in 2012, two years DuVernay’s tactic isn’t unfounded after the Pulitzer Prize-winning author — Wilkerson (played in the movie by published The Warmth of Other Suns. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) weaves herself Trayvon Martin (Myles Frost) has just throughout Caste — though been murdered in Florida, and DuVernay’s employment of said Wilkerson’s colleagues urge her to scenes is curious. In one, a MAGAwrite something about the incident, to hat-wearing plumber (Nick Offerman) use her voice to help everyone undervisits Wilkerson’s flooded basement with as little help and as much disdain stand. Wilkerson defers. Writing is long and isolating work, and she has as possible. Then Wilkerson reaches familial obligations that take preceout with sympathy and connects with dence. Then, two deaths in quick sucthe plumber. In the movie, the scene
cession leave Wilkerson with the wealth of the time it takes to write her book — not exactly a ringing endorsement for the loved ones of writers. Wilkerson travels to Germany, to India, to the South. She reads books, talks to people, collects research. Some scenes DuVernay visualizes with historical recreations full of somber music and melodramatic images to drive the emotion. In others, Wilkerson narrates while writing on her whiteboard or tapping away at her MacBook’s keyboard. It’s not scintillating cinema, but it does get the point across. DuVernay makes Wilkerson’s investigation convincing, and Ellis-Taylor’s face makes us care. Adaptations are tricky things. Most of the time, financial incentives drive the project because a successful book brings in a built-in audience. How can you lose? For a select few, you don’t, and a successful book drives readers to see the movie. If the movie is good enough, it drives viewers back to the book. I figure a lot of people who read Caste will want to see Origin, but I don’t know how many people will walk out of Origin and check out Caste. That’s a shame. Wilkerson’s book is one of the most memorable works I’ve encountered this decade. The movie? Not so much.
ON SCREEN:
Origin opens in wide release Jan. 19
BOULDER WEEKLY
JANUARY 18, 2024
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