The OA on Netflix

I'm not entirely sure what it's about, but it looks very interesting. I suspect that figuring out what it's about will be half the fun. The series will be released on December 16.

 

Brit Marling? I'm in. Super creative. Picks projects well.

 

I'd heard of this a few days ago, but like everyone else, I have no idea what it's about except for the very basic one line outline provided. I hope it's not a woo-y supernatural type thing (which it might well be). At only 8 eps, it should be short and sweet.

 

This is getting some savage reviews: A Sci-Fi Mystery Not Worth Investigating:

"It’s weird, and slow, teasing and teasing its way to a payoff that is meant to seem profound and instead plays as utterly ludicrous and at times borders on offensive.

...we're waiting and waiting for the end of the story — which starts to lose so much steam by the end that one of the later episodes runs only 30 minutes — to have any sense of whether it was worth the time…and it’s laughable. And presented as deadly serious and profound".

Oh dear, I don't think I'll bother with this one. Perhaps the lack of fanfare is due to Netflix knowing it's a stinker?

 

Are there other reviews with similar sentiments or just this one? In any event, I'm not planning to watch this one until I'm done with The Man in the High Castle.

 

Yeah, try this one:

TV Review: Netflix’s ‘The OA’ »

Looks like my woo-sniffing radar was accurate... From the this review:

"The show wants to sidestep rational knowledge, in favor of truths that are felt or known intuitively; to use dream logic to draw on a fundamental, shared humanity."

This rubs against every fiber of my being - ugh!!!

 

This is a weird, weird, wacky show. I think it may also be the first TV series in history to have its opening credits 57 MINUTES -- yes, I said FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES -- from the start. And four credited editors plus an additional editor. WTF? But by god, it's unpredictable and very, very, very strange. It's holding my interest so far. The show has an odd look, but the performances are interesting, the plot is compelling and effectively mysterious, ad the pacing and structure are unlike anything I've seen. It's almost like Ingmar Bergman made a TV show with heavy fantasy/horror overtones.

I was sure it'd be aliens, but apparently it's angels. No more spoilers.

 

I love Brit Marling so I'm gonna have to check this one out.

 

Watched the first part last night.

Hmmmm. Cant say I'm convinced. Will give it one more episode to see if it hooks or not.

 

All positive here from real reviewers. Uproxx? TV Review? The Atlantic has my favorite reviewers these day. I love Christopher Orr.

Netflix's 'The OA' Is Thoroughly Weird and Totally Absorbing »

‘The OA,’ Netflix’s Mysterious New Thriller, Is Your Holiday Break Must-Binge »

Netflix's 'The OA' and the hypnotic allure of weird TV »

 

Ok so I saw a bunch of facebook friends posting things like "WTF OA" and OMG OA" and had absolutely no idea what they were on about. Then I read a comment "Yeah I'm binge watching these on netflix now." So without knowing anything about the show at all, I threw on the first episode. I thought it started out good, turned into a weird teenage drama thing, then completely blew my mind in the last few minutes. I'm not going to read this thread (or anything else online about it) at all until I'm done. It's fun to sometimes just dive into something with no pre-conceived ideas and just see where it goes.

 

it's well done but ultimately silly nonsense... I still watched all 8 episodes, it got it's hooks in me somehow...

 

There are moments of silliness, moments that are pretty darn good and moments where I felt the storytelling was as slow as molasses. All in all it's interesting and unconventional storytelling that Marling has done before in her other collaborations. There's the new age elements that I didn't care for.

 

Finally finished it last night, and all I can say is...

W. T. F.

Let's just warn prospective viewers there's a little bit of Usual Suspects going on. The ending left me in shock, raising far more questions than it did answer anything.

To me, it's a gigantic shaggy dog story that should've been told in maybe 2 hours. 8 hours is ridiculously drawn out, and there are about 279 major plot holes they never even begin to address. Some good ideas in there, along with some very ragged VFX composites.

 

Indeed.

Just finished watching the whole thing (although it had become an exasperated M. Night Shyamalan hatewatch binge by episode 4) and I'm just amazed that this bizarre hot mess got greenlighted with a big budget and the complete freedom to be a bat$hit annoying, pretentious, hilariously ridiculous, intermittently gripping and horrific, and bizarrely New Age gaga narrative about near-death experiences [NDE]. Netfix can apparently do whatever it wants now, no matter how fundamentally idiotic and bad-faith cynical it may be. In a story that lavishes a huge amount of narrative and speculative energy exploring NDEs, a twist at the end proposes that none of the *many* near-death experiences we see and are told about actually ever happened. Oh, and Pina Bausch-style interpretive dance movements open portals to parallel dimensions. Or not.

Amid several good-to-great performances, the star and co-creator Brit Marling turns in one of most mannered terrible James Lipton-bait performances I've seen in a while.

Don't follow the link below if you want to avoid spoilers, but this review really nails what a screwed-up exercise in arty jumped-up weirdness this thing is:

The ridiculous ending of The OA betrays the series' best idea »

 

A strange series! I found it at times a bit boring, thrilling and strange. Until episode 5 it seemed to be heading for at least 12 or fifteen episodes (I only checked at episode 7 how many episodes there really were) or even multiple series. All in all I liked it, but after the last episode I must say I expected more...

 

I just watched the first episode and am avoiding spoilers, but given what I've seen of Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, in the film The Sound of My Voice, it seems absolutely in character for them. A little compelling, a little maddening, a little precious, waaaaay too serious, and hard to decide if there's a point or if it's just a bunch of BS. To be clear, I do recommend The Sound of My Voice, but with the caveat that it's very artsy and low budget, with the emphasis more on getting into your head than on trying to disguise low production values. There's even a device carried over from that film into this episode, where Marling is sitting telling a story with people seated around her. It may all end up being nonsense, but I'm curious enough to watch episode 2.

 

I quite agree. The 70's style movements they did reminded me of Zardoz but without the humor. I agree about the ending. It was sensationalistic and tactless and didn't need to be. They could have used something...anything else and accomplished their goal.

 

Just finished the series, and I'm torn between thinking it's total hysterical nonsense and thinking it raises interesting questions, about valuing relationships, and subjective vs objective reality, which it just can't seem to bring down to earth.

Brit Marling's performance is a train wreck of precious affectations and medium-distance stares masquerading as wide eyed wonder. She's so preposterous that I expected Christopher Guest to appear at any moment to signal that Marling had escaped from a dinner theatre troupe where she's lauded for being "committed" and "intense." It's a pity, because everyone else around her is really good.

Anyone else feel that the "movements" were like pretentious, overly expressive performance art? That kind of hyper-theatricality makes my skin crawl.

Other thoughts:

Spoiler

Overall, the show uses a similar structure to Marling and Batmanglij's The Sound of My Voice, where a charismatic woman has followers do odd things before being revealed as a fake...and then in the final scene something happens that makes it seem she may not be a fake after all. There's a distinct air of Shyamalan's cheap twist manipulations, but in Sound, this structure worked far better because the story was more balanced between is-she-or-isn't-she crazy, and Marling's overacting was constrained by the plot. She is, however, essentially the same character in both the movie and in The OA. Another thought: can we take that little-seen film as a rough sketch for this series, which has gotten much more attention?

You could conceivably explain her performance here by saying she's acting the role of a psychotic, which would excuse a lot of what we see onscreen. My gut tells me that would be a flimsy cover for what is really just, I suspect, her limited acting ability.

Having said that, the series is suspenseful, with good production values and memorable locations, though I found the spacey scenes to be pretty amateurish. But above all -- and here's the vexing part -- it's entertaining, and that includes Marling. Make no mistake, it's pseudo-intellectual trash that can't seem to grasp the bigger ideas it's reaching for, but it sure as hell kept me watching.

 

I agree and I'd also point out that we have a narrator with motives that are suspicious. We find very little to prove what happened to her did happen. When the characters fail to achieve their goal at the end acting together, it really only added to the fact that her character was a bit looney tunes. It truly does examine how the foundation of a cult can occur and, yes, the movements looked like amateur night at an interpretative dance performance.

 

Spoiler

Yes, and they even throw into question her stories about her childhood. So what do we know for certain about her?

She was adopted from her Russian aunt who ran a brothel
She was medicated for psychosis after adoption
She was blind
She disappeared for 7 years
She returned able to see and with strange marks on her back

So there are a lot of presumably intentional loose threads that could play out in a second season.

What was her childhood really like?
What was the actual medical nature of her blindness?
Where did she go for 7 years?
How did she really regain her sight?

As I ask myself these questions, I also find myself wondering why I care. I don't recall the last time I was of two different, very strong opinions about a show. Weird.

 

I think it's open as to whether she was legit or not. As soon as I heard the name Homer in ep. 1 I thought of The Iliad. But just because she had the book doesn't mean the whole story was made up. Maybe she had the book because it was by a guy named Homer so she got it because she loved someone named Homer. The religious angle to this seemed so strong I doubt they are throwing it all away and saying she made it all up. I mean like the way they portrayed the scientists in ep. 6 was such a display of the goofy ultra-religious caricature of scientists, it had to be a Christian-oriented deal.

 

Food for thought regarding the ending, because I can't stop thinking/reading about this show:

A Close Read of The OA’s Controversial Ending »

 

This review sums up my feelings pretty well, especially the very funny, very accurate last paragraph:

Let’s Ponder the Ridiculous, Infuriating Interpretive Dance-Filled Finale of ‘The OA’ »

 

I loved it, even though most of it was nonsense.

Were the episodes really of varying length? Ep 5, I think it was, was only about 31 minutes.