Here’s another take from Paul Schrader, this one about Ava Duvernay’s “Origin,” which he really likes, and how it was undeservedly shunned by the Academy:
ORIGIN. I'm ashamed to say I only recently saw Ava DuVurney's extraordinary film. I put off seeing it because it seemed, on superficial description, more like a film I should see than a film I wanted to see. I was wrong: it swept me away, Origin should have been a no brainer for Oscar noms but I suspect Academy members, like myself, just didn't get around to see it. It was a victim of its own achievement. Could it have been promoted more effectively? I'm not quite sure. Telling readers they MUST see a film is like telling kids they must eat vegetables. But it's not too late. See it.
Schrader is wrong. “Origin” had some fine moments here and there and, contrary to what some might have been led to believe, it wasn’t a bore. It just dumbed down its themes and patronized the audience. It was a simplified tackling of systemic racism. A strange blend of melodrama, fiction and academia.
It’s an ambitious film that wanted to educate the masses, but would have been better served as a documentary. The structure was also very messy — I’m not sure if this was the right format to lay down all of these ideas — and the self-righteousness is a tad too nauseating.
Neon picked up the film in early September, they clearly saw something in it that justified the seven-figure acquisition. The film screened at Venice, TIFF and a few other fall fests, and the reviews were good, but not great.
“Origin” ended up being ignored by major voting bodies like SAG, PGA, DGA, as well as most of the year-end top-ten lists. It was originally marked down by pundits as one to keep an eye out for during awards season, but it never really caught on to the zeitgeist.
DuVernay had previously hinted, on her social media, anger towards Neon for doing her wrong with their lack of promotion on “Origin”. She didn’t explicitly call them out, but did come pretty close, and definitely insinuated that her film deserved better backing than it got. The truth is that there really was no way to properly market this film.