The doubts started as soon as director Ava DuVernay optioned the critically acclaimed 2020 nonfiction bestseller “Caste” for the big screen. Some said that Isabel Wilkerson’s revelatory cultural history of racism was unfilmable. That Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, cast in the central role, was not a big enough star to anchor a $38 million movie. And that multiplex audiences would shrink from a gut-wrenching drama that forces them to confront Trayvon Martin, the Holocaust, slavery and the mistreatment of the Dalits in India.
