Love is love is love. Or so the saying goes. As a student of romance narratives in popular media, I think about love and romance all year. Ideas and ideologies about romance color my perception of storytelling. However, I did not expect to see Ava DuVernay’s biographical drama Origin through the lens of romance. As a Dalit woman who has paid attention to the conversations around Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, I assumed that DuVernay’s dramatized adaptation of the book would delve into the infuriating and heart-breaking horrors of US white supremacy, European anti-Semitism, and Hindu caste violence. I wept through this film but left it thinking about love, freedom, and the Buddhist principle of metta or loving-kindness.
Romantic love is everywhere in Origin, with several couples representing different configurations of it: the fictionalized Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) and her husband, Brett (Jon Bernthal); her widowed mother (Emily Yancy), who cherishes memories of her Tuskegee Airman husband. There is romance between the German gentile and Jewish couple Wilkerson learns about while researching the Third Reich, and the two anthropologist couples whose work documenting racism in the Deep South helps her sharpen her thesis. Romantic love is seen in Marion Wilkerson (Niecy Nash) and her husband, who stands by her deathbed as her health declines; in Wilkerson’s friend, Miss Hale (Audra McDonald), and in Miss’s partner in love and parenting. Finally, last but always first—romantic love is shared by Trayvon Martin (played by Myles Frost) during his final phone conversation with Rachel Jeantel, reported as his girlfriend in some news coverage.