Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor Finds the Origin

Ava DuVernay’s latest film, based on Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson.

Ava DuVernay’s latest socially conscious film could rightfully put Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor back in the Oscar race. Origin, based on the nonfiction book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Pulitizer Prize–winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, is a fictionalized drama based on the author’s experience of writing the New York Times bestseller. Ellis-Taylor plays Wilkerson as she copes with the death of her husband while writing the book about race in America, which uses the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany as lenses to understand our own country. In the trailer, we see DuVernay translate this comparative study into images. Ellis-Taylor’s Wilkerson grapples with her thesis about the interlinked nature of oppression across the globe, much to the confusion of a white colleague. While considering her research, Ellis-Taylor remembers a kiss with her husband, played by Jon Bernthal. “You don’t escape trauma by ignoring it,” she says. “You escape trauma by confronting it.” Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Niecy Nash-Betts, Nick Offerman, and Blair Underwood also star. Origin is coming to theaters soon, together with its theory of everything.

This post has been updated.

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• Caste Offers a New Word for Injustice in America, Not a New Way of Thinking