Origin (2023)

Manuel São Bento September 8, 2023

★ 7/10

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://fandomwire.com/origin-venice-film-festival-review-a-must-see-educational-story/ "Origin brilliantly transposes the pillars of caste from Isabel Wilkerson's book to the big screen through an incredibly revealing, genuinely fascinating narrative, despite becoming clear that the source material is better suited to a documentary. The exceptionally human performances of the entire cast, especially Aunjanue Ellis, compensate for some lack of balance between emotionally personal dialogues and weighty lectures. Impactful imagery and an extremely stirring score make the audiovisual experience even more captivating. It's not without issues, but it's one of the most important stories to watch/read this century." Rating: B

CinemaSerf March 14, 2024

★ 7/10

The acting is all really quite adequate here, but it's not really that important to the fascinating underlying premiss that underpins the theory that race, in itself, might not be the reasons for the hierarchical nature of a society that always manages to create sub-classes. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor offers her own engaging perspective on author Isabel Wilkerson who is invited by a publisher to offer a more considered and less reactionary appraisal of race relations following the murder of a young black man who just happened to be in the wrong place (a white neighbourhood) at the wrong time. The audience know full well from the outset what has happened here, so that's not especially important to the plot either - it's her search for a rationale. That search attempts to draw parallels between the plight of the African American citizenry with the victims of Holocaust and of the system of caste…

Brent Marchant March 17, 2024

★ 8/10

Those who believe that institutionalized systemic racism is fundamentally an American problem should probably give a serious look to this latest offering from writer-director Ava DuVernay, best known for the superb historical drama, “Selma” (2014). Based on the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by best-selling author Isabel Wilkerson, the film examines how organic prejudices are actually a worldwide phenomenon that may or may not have anything specifically to do with race but are more readily attributable to matters of caste. While the picture indeed examines this practice from an American perspective, it also addresses it from the standpoint of the dictates employed in Nazi Germany and in the longstanding Indian caste system, where race was/is not an inherent issue. Rather, the institutionalized discriminatory practices in these locales (as well as in others) were (and in s…

swiewior January 3, 2025

★ 4/10

A missed opportunity. While I agree with the most but not everything that was stated in the movie, I can't understand why it failed to find obvious similarities to segregation based on religion. Am I the only one who sees forbidding marriage between religions the same as forbidding interracial marriagies? I think it was convenient to find funds for this movie in times of woke movement. The intentions of the author can be clearly seen by referring to tragic and catchy events such as the death of a convicted felon and local thug George Floyd as racially based and several other events while they had nothing to do with racial discrimination. The movie had a perfect chance of becoming challenging and discussing other aspects of racial segregation such as a very high number of crimes, unemployment and gangs in areas occupied by black people, dispropotionate to their population. It could …