Origin

The writer Isabel Wilkerson, after a run of deaths in her family, sets out to write the book Caste. The film follows both her grief and her research as she tries to connect the racial order of the United States, the caste system in India and the law of Nazi Germany. It is not interested in the history of racism. It is interested in how a thought gets built: what we watch is a thesis, its evidence, and a writer's effort to hold the two together. Rather than adapting the book, the film films the writing of it. The form is unusual as a result. Reconstructions, archive and present-day scenes are threaded together, some passages closer to the essay and some to outright melodrama. The production story is part of the subject. Unable to raise money through the usual channels, Ava DuVernay went to philanthropists instead of a studio: the Ford Foundation, non-profits backed by Melinda French Gates, Laurene Powell Jobs and Anne Wojcicki, the MacArthur and Robert Wood Johnson foundations and Agnes Gund were among the investors. The budget came to $38 million; the film played in competition for the Golden Lion at Venice in 2023 and took $4.8 million at the box office. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays Wilkerson, with Niecy Nash and Jon Bernthal in support. Who it is for: viewers who want a film of ideas, are curious about the writing process, and follow DuVernay's work. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a single story. The film keeps jumping between three countries and three periods, and the transitions do not always hold.