Director: Ava DuVernay

Stars: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal Niecy Nash, Victoria Pedretti, Emily Yancy

DuVernay’s time-juggling, globe-straddling picture, based on the nonfiction book ‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’ by Isabel Wilkerson is ambitious but flawed. Ellis-Taylor plays Black author Wilkerson. It begins in the aftermath of the shooting of African American teen Trayvon Martin; and author/journalist Wilkerson (Ellis-Taylor) is being urged by her publishers to write something on the incident. Mourning the recent death of her white husband Brett (Bernthal) and of her mother Ruby (Yancy), she is initially reluctant. Isabel starts work on a new book, drawing on the varied experiences and accounts of a Black American couple in Nazi Germany; two sets of undercover journalists in the Deep South in the 50s; and lower caste Indians, arriving at the conclusion that caste is the unifying factor in dysfunctional societies, not racism. For the most part, this a discursive and thought-provoking meditation on caste and race, and the depiction of Wilkerson putting together her thesis is genuinely engaging. The picture, however, is often undone by the director’s middlebrow instincts and overbearing, unsubtle soundtrack and ersatz TV movie-style period flashbacks. Ellis-Taylor is excellent as a woman channelling her grief into her work.

David Willoughby

Follow David on Twitter @DWill_Crackfilm