When filmmaker Ava DuVernay read Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she was so stunned that she reread it twice.
The bestselling book draws a line between India’s caste system, the hierarchies of Nazi Germany and the historic subjugation of the black people in the United States, reported The wire.
“It took me a really long time to wrap my mind around the idea that there’s something underneath racism that’s called caste,” DuVernay says. “It doesn’t mean racism doesn’t exist. It means the foundation, the root, the origin, underneath is the very simple premise – someone has to be better than someone else.”
DuVernay was warned that caste was too complex to adapt into a film but with each reading she felt a story emerge more clearly. Her new movie Origin, which released in Singapore on June 13, centres on Wilkerson, played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, as she explores how understanding the caste system can deepen our understanding of what black people experience in America. DuVernay describes it as “a film about a woman in pursuit of an idea”.
Through this 150-minute movie, DuVernay, known for her Oscar nominated Selma (2014) tries to establish a compelling and convincing link between caste discrimination in India, racial apartheid in America and the persecution of Jews in Germany.
It features Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, an Indian jurist, political leader and social reformer, who founded Bahishkrit Hitkarini Sabha (Society for Welfare of the Ostracised) and led social movements such as Mahad Satyagraha in 1927 to demand justice and equal access to public resources for the historically oppressed castes of Indian society.
Gaurav Pathania, assistant professor of sociology at Easter Mennonite University in Virginia, plays the role of Dr Ambedkar.
In one scene, Wilkerson is shown opening The Annihilation of Caste, an undelivered speech written in 1936 by Dr Ambedkar. as she tries to find answers to a range of questions that hit her after she learns of the death of a young black man, Treyvon Martin, who was killed in 2012 for merely walking in a white neighbourhood.
This shatters her to the core. She instantly decides to understand the root cause of racism and its nuances in the US. In her quest, she travels to Germany and India as well.
Origin underlines how caste is an intrinsic factor in a developing country like India where there still continues an inhuman practice of manual scavenging: Dalits (untouchables) enter a manhole full of human excreta without any protection and only the oil on their body.
The director uses Dr Ambedkar’s original voice and his opinion on endogamy (the custom of marrying only within a local community) as a preserver of caste very succinctly to make a point. He is shown in various avatars – as a student at Columbia university, in New York and during the Mahad Satyagraha. But his screen presence is limited and he has no dialogues.
In the US, the movie has received rave reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and has been appreciated for the incredible performance of the lead actor and unique storytelling by the director.
