Reaction Shots

I wasn't quite certain what to expect going into Origin , Ava DuVernay's latest. I knew it would be less of a typical narrative than an exploration of what divides us, but I wasn't prepared for the film's thesis (because I hadn't read Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: the Origin of Our Discontents , an oversight soon to be corrected). The film, however, is not a documentary based on a book, but a frequently stirring and moving interpretation of how Wilkerson came to write it and a masterful demonstration of how an idea-driven film can hold the content of those ideas and engage us with how an author comes upon those ideas layered into the day-to-day unfolding of her life. This isn't the kind of movie that can be "spoiled" in the sense of ruining a plot twist or a surprise ending; what would spoil it, i think, would be to talk too much about the film and giving people the impression that they've experienced it because the idea that ...