'Origin' movie review: A deep-dive into global caste politics

For those familiar with journalist Isabel Wilkerson’s stunning book ‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’ (2020), this movie is a must-watch. For those unfamiliar with the work or its author, this movie is a must-watch, twice underlined.

Origin is by filmmaker Ava DuVernay who garnered global praise for her 2016 documentary ‘13th’ on the incarceration of Blacks. Though structured like a docu-drama, the movie misses out on the drama and lacks any plot. However, it more than makes up for it with its ruminations on caste, race, subjugation and the complex interconnectedness of it all. Isabel was the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism. Her book looks at the globally similar patterns of injustice and prejudice and nudges its readers to see race and caste as two sides of the same coin.

Origin traces the birth of these concepts and thoughts in Isabel’s head and takes the viewer along with her on her travels through different countries in her bid to understand the subterranean connections between the Holocaust and the American racial segregation laws, for instance. Or, for that matter, untouchability practised in India and its deep links with ‘racism’. 

Aunjanue Ellis plays Isabel with quiet dignity. There is strength, conviction and purpose, in her eyes, in her stride. However, do not go looking for any message — the movie offers none. Perhaps that was never the intention; for there is no singular explanation for why humans behaved the way they did (and do) with fellow beings.