NEW YORK (AP) ā Ava DuVernay kept hearing she had to read She had Isabel Wilkersonās book in galleys before it was published in 2020. Oprah Winfrey kept telling her to read it. But she put it off. It seemed an imposing read. Copies kept proliferating in her home.
āAt one point, a high-profile director said to me, āI heard you got the book,āā DuVernay says. āAnd I was like, āYeah, I got a couple copies.ā He said, āNo, I heard youāre doing it.ā I said, āAs in doing a movie?ā So I said I better read this.ā
But even once she cracked Wilkersonās book open, it took DuVernay a few reads before it really sunk in. āCaste,ā a best-seller released shortly before the death of George Floyd, reframed American racism through historical stratifications of caste. āRace, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste,ā wrote Wilkerson. āCaste is the bones, race the skin.ā
For DuVernay, whose films ( ) have illuminated American history with rigor and passion, the thesis of āCasteā was eye-opening.
āI was so wrapped up with the idea of race as a Black woman. That was the lens through which I see myself and the world sees me,ā says DuVernay. āThatās what I thought.ā
āOrigin,ā DuVernayās new film, isnāt a direct adaptation of Wilkersonās book. DuVernay, who wrote the script, centers it on Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), following the author while she researches the book and navigates her own personal joys and tragedies. The film takes a heavyweight work of historical and sociological inquiry and transforms it into a deeply humanistic drama and a globe-trotting detective story.
āSheās Indiana Jones. Sheās going around the world in search of the holy grail,ā says Ellis-Taylor. āSheās on this process of discovery and then in the middle of that worldwide hunt, she loses, and her loss is immeasurable. But sheās still searching. That is a hero. That is a cinematic hero.ā
DuVernay and Ellis-Taylor met for an interview last month in the downtown offices of Neon, which is releasing āOriginā theatrically Friday. They had only just begun talking about their still-fresh experience making the film. Ellis-Taylor hadnāt yet seen it and wasnāt sure she was going to. āIt was so personal for me,ā she said. āI donāt want to share it with anybody yet.ā
Some have overlooked āOriginā since its . DuVernay has lamented Ellis-Taylorās absence thus far from the pomp of award season. But underestimating āOriginā would be a mistake. The film, which made numerous 10 lists , is audaciously original in how it fuses big ideas with emotional warmth.
If āCasteā sought to describe some of the man-made hierarchies that repeat throughout history, āOriginā ā which DuVernay and her producing partner, Paul Garnes, gathered financing for independently ā is itself a work that boldly and beautifully transcends conventional Hollywood limitations.
DuVernay and Garnes raised $38 million with the help of philanthropists ā including the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ā many of whom had little Hollywood experience but believed in the movie. Melinda Gates is a producer. NBA stars like Chris Paul invested.
āWe are in an industry and a society where everything has a label. If thereās a Black woman director and a Black woman lead, it has to be about things they care about,ā DuVernay says. āMy hope is that we can somehow break caste.ā
āOriginā opens with a dramatic recreation of the shooting of Trayvon Martin and later dips into historical vignettes including Nazi Germany, Jim Crow-era Mississippi and . It steps into stories from history while capturing Wilkersonās life with her husband (Jon Bernthal) and mother (Emily Yancy) ā intimate dramas that touchingly counter and clarify some of the social structures Wilkerson traces while seeking the roots of racism.
āI wanted something where her intimate personal journey ran alongside, mirrored, challenged and actually complemented this huge universal truth that we donāt really know," DuVernay says. "And I felt like somewhere in there, there were touch points where they could complement each other. One doesn't always lead perfectly into other, but that they were in a conversation.ā
Ellis-Taylor, the Oscar-nominated co-star of āKing Richard,ā had acted in DuVernayās 2019 miniseries āWhen They See Us,ā about the 1989 Central Park jogger case. She signed on to āOriginā without a script. āI had read āThe Warmth of Other Suns,āā she says, alluding to Wilkersonās prior book. āSo how bad could it be?ā
DuVernay describes the making of āOriginā as centered on her work with Ellis-Taylor, a collaboration founded on their mutual personal connection to the material.
āThese things that she speaks about in her pillars of caste, thatās stuff I lived with. Theyāre not abstract ideas. Thatās my reality,ā says Ellis-Taylor, who was raised in Mississippi.
Seeing race as a caste was, to Ellis-Taylor, a revelatory new paradigm.
āThat excites me. That sets me on fire,ā she says. āAnd I believe this film is a dangerous film. If it does the work that I want it to do in theaters, it should make people angry. It should make people mad. I felt myself as being a soldier in that battle.ā
DuVernay, too, describes herself as ready for āugly feedbackā to the film. A prominent proponent of inclusivity in cinema and the first African American woman to direct a $100 million-budgeted live-action film, sheās accustomed to the cultural battles that often accompany frank discussions of race.
āI am used to it. But on āSelmaā I was unprepared and it hurt me. It hurt me when people came at me about LBJ (on āSelmaā) and that Iām tearing down peopleās legacy and that Iām wrong and how dare I do this and that when I was advancing the perspective of a group of people that usually donāt have a story told from their point of view,ā says DuVernay. āIt seems whenever I do that, I'm wrong. Iāve felt that vitriol and felt that anger.ā
āIn this, Iām prepared for it in a way I hadnāt been before,ā DuVernay adds. āAnd my preparation involves: Deal with it. Iām not going to fight you. Itās in there. Have at it.ā
Yet the most common reaction to āOriginā from audiences has been an outpouring of emotion. Moviegoers often come out of the theater drying their eyes. Far from academic, the movieās power builds through its straightforward humanity ā what DuVernay calls ā15 little love stories.ā
In between are some painful historic episodes. Yet even filming those ā like the Martin shooting ā the director doesnāt find agonizing.
āMy experience in shooting these kinds of films before has given me a set of muscles and tools where it doesnāt bother me, and I actually feel empowered and bolstered because I get to be the teller of these stories,ā says DuVernay.
āOriginā was shot quickly, in 37 days across three countries during early 2023. DuVernay turned it around quickly, completing the edit in time for Venice in September. It was a fast enough process that Ellis-Taylor has trouble locating it chronologically in her mind.
āI think I know why,ā she says. āBecause it doesnāt feel real. It feels like a miracle.ā
DuVernay calls āOriginā the film sheās proudest of, partly because of how she made it outside the studio system. Each film before has felt to DuVernay, who started in the industry as a publicist, like a test, either to herself or to prove her talent behind the camera. Her last movie, ā for the Walt Disney Co., adapted a famously difficult-to-adapt novel. The experience of āOriginā ā while no less daunting -- was different.
āFor me, itās shifted everything I know about myself and my work. To be working with a freedom and an abandon yet a sense of certainty in my skills. To not feel like āOh, I didnāt go to film school and Iām just skating by,'" DuVernay says. "This was just free.ā
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In a story published Jan. 17, 2024, about the movie āOrigin,ā The Associated Press erroneously reported the name of actor Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. It was updated Jan. 19, 2024, to correct her first name to Aunjanue.
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Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
