By Peg Aloi

The breadth and intimacy of Origin‘s vision — the personal becomes the historical — is stunning, a searing portrait of collective trauma and the dark ideas that propel it.

Origin, written and directed by Ava DuVernay. Screening at Coolidge Corner Theatre, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Kendall Cinema, and other cinemas around New England.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in Origin.

Based on the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, Origin leaps beyond a conventional attempt to bring an ambitious, sprawling, and insightful study to the screen. The film’s screenplay boldly melds Wilkerson’s rigorous historical and cultural exploration with a semi-fictionalized narrative about the author herself. Director DuVernay sensitively dramatizes Wilkerson’s personal journey in creating her book, a quest undertaken in the wake of enormous personal loss and grief. There could hardly be a better filmmaker to pull off this kind of cinematic challenge: DuVernay’s exploration of traumatic trajectories in African-American culture and history has yielded such electrifying, enduring films as 13^th and Selma, as well as the award-winning series When They See Us.

Before introducing Wilkerson’s personal story, the film takes a broader foray into recent historical events. The opening scene unfolds with a curious calm, until we recognize its heart-stopping context. An African-American teenage boy is out walking; he’s talking to a friend on the phone and laughing. He pauses the call when he goes into a convenience store, takes a drink from the fridge and, almost as an afterthought, grabs a packet of candy from the display by the counter. Some may already know what’s happening here, others will soon catch on when this young man exits the store, sees that it’s raining, and pulls the hood of his grey sweatshirt up over his head. This is 17-year-old Trayvon Martin; within the hour he will be gunned down in cold blood on his way to the home of his father’s fiancée in Sanford, Florida.

How do people of good will make sense of the cruelty, brutality, and needlessness of this killing? As Martin’s story dominates the news, Wilkerson grieves the boy’s death. Her editors (Blair Underwood and Vera Farmiga) urge her to write about it. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (Lovecraft Country)’s Wilkerson is a down-to-earth but complex woman who is balancing a successful career as a writer with a happy domestic life she has shared with a loving husband (Jon Bernthal). At first, Wlikerson can’t quite find her way into the material; the implications of Trayvon’s murder are overwhelming, almost unfathomable, but they are also horribly familiar. Soon Wilkerson suffers two grievous personal losses; the weird, liminal emotional stasis that often follows such shocks stimulates her to pursue the underpinnings of racist violence. She lays the groundwork for a new book, one that will renew her sense of purpose and, perhaps, soothe her battered spirit.

But Origin is not just about Wilkerson’s writing about racism; it is a searching, inspiring sojourn that traverses the globe. She delves into researching a project that dovetails personal passion and cultural urgency: the book becomes a way to deal with her own grief by way of illuminating the source of so much human pain throughout history. Along the way, Isabel discusses ideas and conceptual tangents with her sister (Niecy Nash-Betts, who just won an Emmy for Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story), as well as friends and colleagues. Her quest eventually leads Wilkerson into an illuminating discovery: racism’s ancient origins lie in the establishment, evolution, and maintenance of a caste system.

As Wilkerson refines her theories and connections, we are given a sense of her creative process through illustrative flashbacks located in the cities she visits. The rise of the Third Reich serves as a backdrop for a forbidden love affair; the undercover mission of two married couples, one white, one Black, to collaborate on research in the Jim Crow South; and the harrowing yet uplifting struggle of a boy — born into the “untouchable” caste in India — who defied the odds to become a respected scholar. These narratives are executed with letter-perfect historical detail and they are interlaced with Wilkerson’s uplifting memories of recently lost loved ones. The breadth and intimacy of Origin‘s vision — the personal becomes the historical — is stunning, a searing portrait of collective trauma and the dark ideas that propel it.

DuVernay has deftly avoided a common misfire in adapting nonfiction works to the screen: this is far from being a dry, academic experience. Editor and longtime collaborator Spencer Averick and cinematographer Matt Lloyd (2019’s Captain Marvel) have infused Origin with considerable visual energy. Ellis-Taylor triumphs as Wilkerson — this is a rich, subtle, career-defining performance. She is backed by a well-chosen cast (including Nick Offerman, Audra McDonald, Connie Nielsen, Finn Wittrock, and Victoria Pederetti) who serve the heightened demands of a multifaceted film of deep emotional intelligence. Some viewers may wish that a more definitive answer or solution had been supplied for the questions raised here. For others, it may be enough that the conversation has been elevated — and enriched — with such grace and power.

Peg Aloi is a former film critic for the Boston Phoenix and member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Critics Choice Awards, and the Alliance for Women Film Journalists. She taught film studies in Boston for over a decade. She writes on film, TV, and culture for web publications like Time, Vice, Polygon, Bustle, Mic, Orlando Weekly, and Bloody Disgusting. Her blog “The Witching Hour” can be found on substack.