‘Origin’ is a Sprawling Tearjerker with the Power to Change Minds

metroweekly.com:

Origin, starring as a celebrated writer diligently solving the puzzle that is her latest book, while also facing unfathomable personal adversity.The book she’s writing happens to be the nonfiction best-seller that inspired this film: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, by Isabel Wilkerson.

In Caste, published in 2020, Wilkerson examines the racial hierarchy in America as a caste system, not unlike systems of oppression in India and in Nazi Germany that have enforced dynamics of superiority and inferiority based on characteristics other than race.“We call everything racism.

It’s a default,” asserts Isabel, beautifully portrayed by Ellis-Taylor, to newspaper editor Amari (Blair Underwood). He’s trying to lure the Pulitzer-winning former journalist back to the paper to write an in-depth piece on the racial dynamics haunting the then-recent killing of Trayvon Martin.

She insists that the case, which Amari views as a clearly racist incident, is rather a reflection of caste.As she sees it, racism is “insufficient” as a paradigm for understanding why a self-deputized Latino man would assume the responsibility of policing a Black youth in a predominantly white neighborhood.