Ava DuVernay Wants to Build a New System

Richard Brody, whose writing about movies runs under the rubric The Front Row, never ceases to surprise me, and enlighten me, with his critical judgment. Like another colleague, Anthony Lane, he has introduced me to the work of more classic filmmakers and films than I could possibly enumerate. I never quite know where Richard will land—and we don’t always agree. He still insists, for example, that Eddie Murphy’s “Norbit” deserves to be “hailed as a masterwork.” Let’s just say that we have discussed this more than once. More recently, and on an arguably higher plane, Richard took a swipe at the “thinly imagined inner lives” of the protagonists of “Oppenheimer” and “Maestro”—two movies I admired. The swipe came by way of praising Ava DuVernay’s latest film, “Origin,” which is a kind of bio-pic, too, centering on the journalist and historian Isabel Wilkerson. Brody wrote, “It’s hard to recall a movie made for general audiences that takes ideas so seriously, that makes the pursuit of them appear so thrilling, or that is so replete with the intellectual substance of the protagonist’s endeavors.” This time, we were aligned.