Movie Review

Powerful Origin from Ava DuVernay confronts cruel history of oppression

The first scene in writer/director Ava DuVernay’s new film, Origin, depicts the beginning of what would be a fatal night for Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, who was shot by a self-proclaimed neighborhood watchperson in 2012. This signals that the film will be a tough watch for any moviegoer, much less those who are tired of seeing Black trauma depicted on screen.

Photo by Atsushi Nishijima

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in Origin.

However, it soon becomes clear that the filmmaker behind Selma and the documentary 13th does not intend for the film to be just about the violence that Black people have suffered through the centuries. Taking inspiration from the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, DuVernay has made a unique film that fronts Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) as a character who essentially takes viewers into the process of writing her book.

One part of the film’s story shows us Wilkerson’s personal life, married to Brett Hamilton (Jon Bernthal) and taking care of her ailing mother (Emily Yancy), among other things. But exposure to the 911 calls around Martin’s killing sends her down a path of exploring the history of oppression throughout the world. This research leads to the central thesis of the book that it is caste – a fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification – and not racism that that is to blame for the societal ill.

What follows for viewers feels like a thoroughly engaging visual book report, one that acts almost like a documentary in parts, only with actual actors. Wilkerson travels the world to investigate other examples of oppression, including the Jewish Holocaust by the Nazis and the ingrained caste system in India. These scenes are interspersed with scenes – also featuring actors – showing historical examples of those who tried to stand up to or expose the wrongness of the subjugation.

Every time Wilkerson has a conversation about her research, the debate between her and other people serves as a source of education for the audience, giving a perspective that never fails to enlighten. One sequence which demonstrates a linkage between American slavery and the Nazis' plans in Germany is particularly powerful. Because the talks are in a fiction film, though, they are full of the emotion that can come when people disagree or moments of clarity when a point fully lands.

The film balances Wilkerson’s explorations with her turbulent personal life, and DuVernay manages to weave together the two in a way that complement each other instead of being at odds. Her interracial relationship with Hamilton, the old-fashioned thinking of her mother, and the patient listening skills of her cousin Marion (Niecy Nash-Betts) all inform her thoughts and her writing in one way or another.

Even though Ellis-Taylor’s role calls for her to be a lecturer and interviewer for much of the film, she still imbues the role with deep feeling. You can feel the pain of what her character is doing and experiencing through her soulful eyes. Bernthal, Nash-Betts, and Yancy all put in strong performances, as do actors with more limited screen time, including Finn Wittrock, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Isha Blaaker, and Audra McDonald.

It is said of some documentaries that they make history come alive, and DuVernay accomplishes the same through a fictional lens in Origin. It offers the persuasive arguments that made Wilkerson’s 2020 book a bestseller alongside a story that resonates for the film’s characters and the world at large.

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Origin is now playing in select theaters; it opens wide on January 26.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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