Starring: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal and Vera Farmiga
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 141 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2024
Reviewer: Peter Fleming
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The film tells the story of a woman, who writes about the concept of caste and who decides to embark on a voyage to investigate how different countries handle bigotry.
This American film is based on the life of Isabel Wilkerson, author and journalist, who was the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. She travels throughout the countries of the world to research caste systems. After experiencing the personal tragedy of the loss of her husband by a brain tumour, Wilkerson embarks on writing a book on institutional racism which she titled Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents that was published in 2020.
The film makes clear Wilkerson’s determination to make the research a global investigation, and that it was also a work of personal discovery. She writes about Trayvon Benjamin Martin, who was a 17-year-old youth fatally shot by an Hispanic 28-year-old man in Sanford, Florida, US, in 2012. Martin’s death helped to spark the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, and it incited Wilkerson to write about caste.
Bigotry in some countries may not be solely determined by race. The film argues that in some countries ‘caste’ is the determining factor. The concept of caste is one that solves some of the issues that consideration of race does not, and the film offers compelling evidence in support of Wilkerson’s treatise. Ellis-Taylor sensitively takes the role of Isabel Wilkerson.
The film competed for the Golden Lion award at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival, and it intelligently outlines the thesis that lives today are defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. Wilkerson’s research connects systemic anti-Black racism in America with similar structures around the world. As a result, the film becomes a drama about the history of caste and racism, and makes forceful connections between racism in the US and evils in other caste systems. It argues how power can operate across societies to divide people into separate castes, and when that happens, racism can occur.
This is a film with thought-provoking messages about the causes of racism. It links the violence associated with American slavery to the horrors of the Holocaust and India’s contentious caste system. DuVernay directs the film with enormous respect for Wilkerson’s work.
In some ways this is almost a journalistic movie, heavily documentary in style, and one that presents a compelling case for viewers to reflect upon a fuller context of meaning for racism, and bigotry. The film tugs at the heart, while stimulating the mind, and is both engaging and arresting.
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