Ava DuVernay’s Origin is a continuation of her typically resonant, politically engaged cinema, since it’s a Black story that encourages change both on and off screen. Here, Victoria Luxford explores the filmmaker’s groundbreaking work.
Ava DuVernay came to prominence portraying the lives of those who inspired real change, telling their stories with fearless honesty and grace. In doing so, she became a changemaker herself. Her latest film, Origin, highlights her ability to reveal new pages of history, and to inspire (or reaffirm) admiration for real-life figures with three-dimensional portraits.
This year marks a decade since DuVernay’s breakout film, the Dr Martin Luther King Jr biopic Selma, which recounts the events that led to the 1965 march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery, in protest of the suppression of African-American voter rights. It’s a story woven into DuVernay’s youth, given she spent summers visiting her stepfather’s childhood home in Selma. This personal connection, and the beloved nature of the subject, may have urged some filmmakers to create a sentimental tribute to King and his efforts. However, DuVernay closes in on difficult topics, and avoids the expected mawkish tone. King, played by David Oyelowo, is shown to be someone who struggles with the weight of expectation, of being the leader of a movement with lives at stake.
Selma (2014)
Selma’s opening scene shows King wrestling with both his tie and his conscience as he dresses to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. He grapples with the optics of the situation, living ‘high on the hog’ as he puts it, while his allies fight for racial equality back home. ‘It’s not a crime to be away for a few days, Martin,’ his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) assures him, and Dr King’s face visibly softens. DuVernay uses characters’ reactions a lot in her film, as in the quiet moment where we see King struggle to find the words to address Cager Lee (Henry G Sanders), who is grieving the brutal murder of his grandson Jimmie. Lee’s reaction to King – who looks at him as if a deity had entered the room – underlines the pressure put on him as a figure of hope.
King, however, is not superhuman in Selma; he’s flesh and blood. His insecurities, fears and marital infidelity are preyed on by those wishing to curtail his activism. Rather than create something salacious, DuVernay shows that history’s heroes are made of the same imperfections as the rest of us, but find the bravery to stand up for what is right. Selma often focuses on faces, or more specifically emotions, instead of racial slurs and violence. We see the camera come in slowly on Coretta as she answers the phone to death threats and recordings of King’s infidelities. We see the demeanour of President Lyndon B Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) change in an instant when his philosophical, but inactive, support is called into question, jabbing at King’s chest and repeating ‘now you listen to me’. The camera pulls out to show Johnson lurching over King, revealing himself to be an ally whose support is conditional on deference. Whereas many biopics would have played out the dry facts, DuVernay illustrates a world of emotional consequences, of people who do not have the audience’s privilege of knowing how things end. That is the difference in the filmmaker’s work, instead of telling a story of heroism, she invites you to live within it.
Selma (2014)
Selma was a critical hit and saw DuVernay become the first Black woman to direct a Best Picture nominee at the 2015 Oscars, though she would not be nominated for Best Director. This, as well as the absence of any Black acting nominees that year – sparking the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite – would lead to a campaign for increased inclusion at the Academy Awards, with rules changing the following year to expand who was invited to vote. DuVernay and her work became a focal point of the discussion, and she leveraged her higher profile to move towards studios and projects that, as she put it during a 2020 award speech, ‘let a Black woman do her thing’ by giving her a platform to pursue storytelling without interference. In the midst of Selma’s success, DuVernay turned down the chance to direct Black Panther, revealing in the summer of 2015 that ‘it really wasn’t going to be an Ava DuVernay film’, likely a sideswipe at the lack of control the MCU allows their directors.
This commitment to her vision and artistry meant that the next Ava DuVernay film would be 2016’s hard-hitting documentary 13th, which looked at America’s prison-industrial complex and the racism at the heart of the justice system. The reception of 13th supercharged the discussion around prison reform, playing a part in bringing about changes to the US Constitution’s 13th Amendment in the late 2010s that repealed exemption clauses regarding involuntary servitude. DuVernay’s career choices have always been motivated by telling the Black-led stories, largely omitted from mainstream cinema, she felt needed to be heard.
13th (2016)
One such figure, Dr Angela Davis, is celebrated in 13th, which recounts how her activism got her arrested and put on trial, where she countered with a damning assessment of the racial inequality in the prison system. Even in the archive footage, traits of DuVernay’s humanistic filmmaking style remain. She zooms in on a young Davis’ face as she recounts the violence she grew up with in Birmingham, Alabama, being friends with the four girls that were killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing dramatised in Selma. Whether documentary or narrative feature, DuVernay takes time to sit with changemakers, illustrating their message rather than condensing it into two-minute speeches.
Origin (2023)
Her new film, Origin, follows this philosophy. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays Isabel – based on the real-life Pulitzer-winning author of Caste (2020) – who is left reeling from personal tragedies and a sense of horror in the aftermath of the murder of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012. Rather than give in to despair, she looks for answers in the past in her writing, forging connections between present-day racial injustice in America and Germany during World War II, as well as the history of the caste system in India, which was formally abolished in the 1940s but left hierarchies that exist to this day. ‘You don’t escape trauma by ignoring it,’ Isabel explains at one point, ‘you escape trauma by confronting it.’ Set against a national outcry, the film does just that. It explores grief and anger without giving into the negative aspects of those emotions. Just as Selma asked what it took to be a national symbol of hope, Origin is curious about how we learn from the past to make a better future.
In this sense, DuVernay’s art is a reflection of the artist. Like Isabel, the filmmaker is interested in ideas as well as activism. 13th was not a howl of mourning, but pages of a manifesto for change. Her great strength comes from stories that can make you think and feel with equal intensity. Origin, much like DuVernay’s entire oeuvre, leaves audiences with minds and hearts filled.
WATCH ORIGIN IN CINEMAS
