Origin

Ava DuVernay is an inquisitive filmmaker, curious about social structures and collective grief.Her newest picture, the ambitious investigative film, “Origin,” has a scene that blends DuVernay’s interests with her rigor. Following a sold-out public talk for her book The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis) bumps into her persistent editor Amari (Blair Underwood) backstage. He wants her to write about the recent death of Trayvon Martin, a tragedy that is impacting the nation at the time. “You have a stable of writers,” Isabel playfully balks. “They don’t have Pulitzer Prizes,” he coolly resorts. Though it’s all done in jest, Isable does have a pragmatic reason for not jumping in. “I want to be in the story, really inside the story,” she says. “And yes, that takes time.” A methodological ethos for DuVernay’s career, the scene also explains the emotional labor required to watch “Origin.”

However, DuVernay’s adaptation of journalist Isabel Wilkerson’s nonfiction work Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, isn’t a duty or a burden. It brims with intoxicated conviction. Isabel and her adoring husband Brett (Jon Bernthal) are an ideal couple, comfortable in the other’s habits and sympathetic to one another’s needs. They begin the film searching for an assisted living home for Isabel’s mother (Emily Yancy). Isabel knows maternal loss is coming. Isabel suffers grave setbacks, tragedies that ultimately inspire her to throw herself into writing a book about Martin. The sprawling work won’t just concern race—racism as a concept limits our understanding of what happened to Martin.

The director’s achievement is rare in Hollywood. Black women are often excluded from the industry before they can build a robust body of work. But from DuVernay's “I Will Follow” to “When They See Us,” you can see her increased command in intermingling collective ache with imperative action. Here, she is meditative, poetic, and nearly unfaltering. Importantly, thedirector’s desire never erodes into degradation porn. In fact, the film’s ending—a swirling, lyrical, tightly constructed summation of Isabel’s argument—is a landmark in DuVernay’s visual lexicon. Sometimes too overt, “Origin” isn’t a perfect movie. But the character of a truly great film isn’t found in its perfection. Rather it arises from how the narrative moves, challenges, and hugs the heart. Rich in thought, “Origin” is a dense, forceful masterwork, and, quite simply, the most radical film of DuVernay’s career.