On 12.8 Ava DuVernay‘s Origin, an instructional drama about a writer exploring the racial caste system in this country, opened theatrically.
I had instinctively decided against seeing it because I regard DuVernay first and foremost as an agenda filmmaker — she has racial scores to settle and is not open to cosmic light and happenstance, at least by my understanding of the term.
On 12.13 Variety‘s Clayton Davis lamented the apparent fact that Origin is getting the cold shoulder from award-season handicappers.
Last night The Hot Mike‘s John Rocha and Jeff Sneider discussed Origin and Clayton’s column. The discussion happens between the 70-minute and 82-minute mark.
HE opinion: Ava DuVernay was seriously damaged after A Wrinkle in Time and has never recovered. She’s made her own reputational bed, and people are pretty much persuaded that she’s an agenda-driven filmmaker who isn’t fully honest (which Selma wasn’t, and one can at least question When They See Us in terms of characterizing the Central Park Five as utterly blameless victims), and who basically makes Black-favoring instructionals which stack the deck or otherwise put her thumb on the scale against historical and present-day racism.
DuVernay is basically a professional-grade woke Black female filmmaker and a symbol of fighting the power. And if you don’t like her films then YOU’RE a racist. People know who she is, and that, I believe, is why they’re not giving Origin the time of day.
Ava is about valiantly fighting the wrongs and the psychological plagues of racism perpetrated by white shitheads, the only problem being that she’s into anti-white portraiture more than honesty. And the industry can smell another Ava harangue in Origin.