Tag Archives: B

ORIGIN

Producers: Paul Garnes and Ava DuVernay   Director: Ava DuVernay   Screenplay: Ava DuVernay   Cast: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash-Betts, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Nick Offerman, Blair Underwood, Connie Nielsen, Emily Yancy, Jasmine Cephas-Jones, Finn Wittock, Victoria Pedretti, Isha Blaaker, Myles Frost, Daniel Lommatzsch, Lennox Sims, Allan Wilayto, Gaurav J. Pathania, Suraj Yengde, Dhrubo Jyoti, Matthew Zuk and Hannah Pniewski Distributor: Neon

Grade: B

In making a film inspired by Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” Ava DuVernay (“Selma”) has attempted something ambitious: dramatizing the author’s development of her thesis within a biographical framework that depicts Wilkerson’s experience as an African-American woman within a society infused with racism and as an individual touched by domestic tragedy.  “Origin” thus becomes both a film of ideas and a portrait of the personal journey that gave rise to them.  If it doesn’t manage entirely to overcome the obstacles in joining all the elements smoothly, sometimes falling into didacticism and near melodrama, its aspirations remain admirable, and its impact considerable.

It also boasts powerful performances by a strong ensemble cast.  Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor anchors the picture as Wilkerson, whose crushing losses—the deaths of her husband Brett Hamilton (Jon Bernthal, genially supportive), mother Ruby (Emily Yancy, endearingly spunky) and cousin (Niecy Nash-Betts, charmingly approachable)—combine with her horrified reaction to the killing of Treyvon Martin (Myles Frost) by self-appointed vigilante George Zimmerman—and lead her to think about American racism in more universal terms.  She develops the argument that American discrimination against Blacks is an instance of a global embrace of caste systems that one can perceive in Nazi anti-Semitism and in the Indian hierarchy that places the Dalits, formerly called Untouchables, at the lowest level.  All, she contends, represent a process of dehumanization driven by a desire, or need, to dominate. 

She develops the thesis by visits to Germany and India designed to educate herself about the comparisons she’s drawing.  In each case DuVernay integrates historical reenactments to illustrate how Wilkerson reaches her conclusions.  In the case of Germany, she learns from visits to libraries and museums, as well as conversations with her hosts, about book-burnings and meetings among Nazi officials like Josef Goebbels (Daniel Lommatzsch) who describe Jim Crow laws as exemplars the regime can follow in developing its own discriminatory measures.  But DuVernay also includes more intimate lessons, such as the story of August Landmesser (Finn Wittock), whose romance with Irma Eckler (Victoria Pedretti) led him to protest the regime by refusing to give the obligatory Hitler salute, resulting in his imprisonment (she, of course, was murdered along with millions of her fellow Jews); she also relates the experience of academics Allison and Elizabeth Davis (Isha Blaaker and Jasmine Cephas-Jones), a black couple who, after visiting Germany after Hitler’s rise to power, retuned home and joined with a white couple, Burleigh and Mary Gardner (Matthew Zuk and Hannah Pniewski) to investigate the Jim Crow system in the American South.

The Indian segment concentrates on the career of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (Gaurav J. Pathania), who oversaw the drafting of the Indian Constitution following independence and was so strong an opponent of the concept and practice of Untouchability that even today, statues of him have to be protected by cages to prevent vandalism.  Here much of the information is simply related by Suraj Yengde and Dhrubo Jyoti, who act as Wilkerson’s tour guides, as it were.

Then there is the American material which, in addition to reenactments of the Martin killing and lynchings, includes sequences portraying Wilkerson’s own interactions with family as well as friends like her editor (Blair Underwood).  But it too adds other intimate scenes, like one in which an acquaintance named Miss Hale (Audra McDonald) relates the impact an encounter with a hostile school principal who could not accept that “Miss” was actually her name had on her, and a reenactment of a devastating episode that actually occurred in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1951: Al Bright (Lennox Sims), the only Black member of a champion Little League squad brought to a local pool for a post-game celebration, was forbidden to swim with his teammates because of the park’s segregationist policies. The sad compromise, dramatized as it’s related by one of the boy’s surviving teammates (Allan Wilayto) to Wilkerson, is positively heartbreaking. 

The treatment does not always avoid heavy-handedness: If Lincoln spoke of a house divided, for example, here the deterioration of Wilkerson’s home, which she prepares to sell after Brett’s death, is employed as a metaphor for the structural weaknesses of a society undermined by racism when Wilkerson converses with a plumber (Nick Offerman) wearing a MAGA hat.  But one is willing to overlook such overreach when the film is so clearly heartfelt.  And DuVernay does include possible objections to Wilkerson’s overarching idea—in the sequence set in Germany, for instance, a woman named Sabine (Connie Nielsen) points out that the analogy the author is crafting fails because slavery involved subjugation for economic motives, while the Nazi Final Solution was aimed at extermination, very different motivations—an observation perhaps too quickly dismissed here.   

One can argue that DuVernay tries to cram too much into the picture, and note that while perfectly competent from a visual perspective, the craft contributions—production design (Ina Mayhew), costumes (Dominique Dawson) and cinematography (Matthew J. Lloyd)–are more adequate than exceptional.  Spencer Averick’s editing can’t always avoid some jarring transitions, and Kris Bowers’ score isn’t particularly memorable.

But while “Origin” is in some respects an ungainly film, even if you question Wilkerson’s conclusions, it, like her book, encourages you to ponder them, and to appreciate the commitment that the author brought to her work.

AMERICAN FICTION

Producers: Ben LeClair, Nikos Karamigios, Cord Jefferson and Jermaine Johnson   Director: Cord Jefferson   Screenplay: Cord Jefferson and Percival Everett   Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, Adam Brody, Keith David, Okieriete Onaodowan, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Raymond Anthony Thomas, Miriam Shor, J.C. MacKenzie, Patrick Fischler, John Ales, Michael Cyril Creighton, Neal Lerner, Jenn Harris, Bates Wilder and Ryan Richard Doyle  Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Grade: B

After toiling in television writing rooms for a decade, Cord Jefferson attempts a difficult balancing act in his first feature, an adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” for which the author himself collaborated on the script and Jefferson took on directing duties for the first time.  At once a satire of liberal white America’s stereotyping of the black experience and a domestic drama about the reality of that experience, “American Fiction” doesn’t manage to juggle its disparate plotlines effortlessly, and is a mite too genteel in tone for its own good, but overall it proves a winning debut.

Much of the success is attributable to a skillfully modulated, laid-back performance by Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, an author and academic who runs into trouble with the English faculty at the college after he confronts a white student in his class who claims to be offended by his writing the title of Flannery O’Connor’s short story “The Artificial Nigger” on the board.  At a departmental meeting where he trades insults with a hostile colleague (Patrick Fischler) while the wimpy chair (John Ales) tries to maintain order, the defensive Monk is told that he’s being put on leave.

His first order of business is to attend a conference where he encounters Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), who’s being feted for her novel “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto,” which strikes him as an example of the sort of “black literature” that’s embraced by the supposed literati as truthful and incisive but he sees as condescending and unrepresentative of the variety of African-American experience—like his own upper-middle-class upbringing.  In his frustration at having his latest novel rejected by his publisher for not being “black” enough, he pens a parody of the drugs-and-gangsta genre that he calls “My Pafology” and ascribes to one Stagg R. Leigh (as he writes, Keith David and Okieriete Onaodowan appear in his imagination as the warring father-son duo in the book).  He insists that his genial agent Arthur (the engaging John Ortiz) submit it to publishers, assuming that it will be recognized as a joke.

It isn’t.  A firm offers big bucks for the publishing rights, and its chief representative (Miriam Shor) and marketing head (Michael Cyril Creighton) enthuse over its “honesty”—and its potential profits.  When they insist on meeting Leigh, Arthur, himself anxious for success, persuades Monk to impersonate Leigh, explaining that he can only do so via Zoom, because he’s a wanted fugitive and when a hot Hollywood producer-director appropriately named Wiley (Adam Brody) buys the movie rights and wants to meet the author personally, he has to carry the impersonation further, into a restaurant.  (The publisher reps indicate that Michael B. Jordan is interested in starring, and suggest that they might do a movie tie-in cover with the actor wearing, as Monk looks on incredulously, a durag.)

The satire is extended as Monk is asked by Carl Brunt (J.C. MacKenzie), the head of a New England book award program that’s been criticized for its lack of diversity, to join the jury that will choose the year’s winner.  He’ll join Sintara and three others—Wilson (Neal Lerner), Ailene (Jenn Harris) and Daniel (Bates Wilder), all white—on the panel, and is astonished when his own parody book, now retitled (at his own suggestion) “Fuck,” is submitted.  He and Sintara are outvoted to give it the prize: they find it pandering and phony, while the others acclaim it as gritty and piercingly real.  That leads to the award ceremony where Monk must decide whether to reveal the truth, and to a finale on a Hollywood sound stage where he and Wiley argue over how the movie should end. 

What’s remarkable about all this is that one might expect all this to be presented in an edgy, angry way, but it isn’t.  Jefferson, Wright and the others bring out the humor, but in a remarkably gentle, even generous fashion; the publishing reps, white jury members and even Wiley are presented as obtuse and even fatuous, but they’re not mean-spirited, merely smugly misguided.  And Monk himself is depicted as flawed himself, not only in the way he sees himself (he berates a hapless bookstore clerk played by Richard Ryan Doyle for putting his novels in a section titled “African-American Voices” rather than the “Fiction” shelves, and must admit his misjudgment of Sintara) but especially in his relationships with his family.

That constitutes the second portion of “American Fiction,” in which Monk reconnects with his Boston roots.  After years of distancing himself, he returns to find his divorced sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), a doctor, struggling to care for their widowed mother Agnes (Leslie Ellison), who’s showing signs of increasing dementia.  Death intervenes, which brings the return of their brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), divorced after announcing that he’s gay—something Lisa has refused to accept.  And room is found for other subplots—the revelation of a family secret regarding Monk’s deceased father; Monk’s romance with Coraline (Erika Alexander), a lawyer with whom he sometimes disagrees; another between the family’s longtime housekeeper Lorraine (Myra Lucretia Taylor) and Maynard (Raymond Anthony Thomas), a gregarious cop.  This section of the film dovetails with the satirical one—Monk’s going along with the farcical reaction to his book is tied to his need for the money to pay for Agnes’ medical treatment—but more fundamentally it’s designed to show how his domestic reality doesn’t fit the common portrayal of African-American life in the entertainment media.

Of course, blending the two parts of the film requires a delicate touch, and Jefferson doesn’t prove himself entirely deft in the task.  There are points where the conjunctions are a bit off, where the pacing is somewhat off, where the tone isn’t quite on target.

Yet the failings are minor beside the general success of the whole.  With Wright leading the way, the cast is solid across the board, even minor characters coming across strongly.  And while the film won’t win any technical awards, the production design (Jonathan Guggenheim), costumes (Rudy Mance), cinematography (Cristina Dunlop) and editing (Hilda Rasula) are all more than competent.  Laura Karpman’s score doesn’t always feel as finely judged as it might be, and is occasionally just too obtrusive, but it’s not a terrible flaw.

One can imagine a Spike Lee taking on this material with ferocity, but that’s not Jefferson’s way.  In its calmer, more reflective, more good-natured way, “American Fiction” makes its points in a package more comfortable than aggressive.  You might not agree with that choice, but it mostly works.