One of the many foolish things the social media age has wrought is the inability to discern a great film from a bevy of abbreviated, compelling ideas that don’t make up a single cohesive thought. That’s how a lot of people have come to understand and discuss complex truths — through bursts of cursory statements that only lead to other, unrelated discussions.
This isn’t synonymous with quality art. And since we’re being honest, it doesn’t really make for productive conversations either. But that’s the era out of which many movies and TV shows, including Emerald Fennell’s vapid “Saltburn” and Sam Levinson’s equally hollow “The Idol,” were born and have in many cases thrived.
Many of writer-director Ava DuVernay’s big dramatic features struggle with that same issue. Her latest, “Origin,” is no exception.
While some of her white counterparts’ work subsist on “vibes only” formulas, DuVernay, who is Black, has carved almost an entire dramatic film career out of narratives that merely point out prejudice and too often reduce characters to symbols (of oppression? resistance?) rather than actual people.
For instance, 2014’s “Selma” scarcely propped up myth-like historical figures, while 2018’s “A Wrinkle in Time” bafflingly tried to do too much and too little at the same time. To that end, it’s easy to see why DuVernay might have been considered suitable to adapt Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 bestseller “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” which offers a complex theory on race and the global caste system.
Atsushi Nishijima/Courtesy NEON
Wilkerson’s book was the object of renown, but it’s also been criticized for flattening certain matters and highlighting already-understood issues without moving the conversation forward. And much of DuVernay’s film work…
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