The OA’s Anatomy

The OA is a very strange series. Created by Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling, already authors of The Sound of My Voice and The East, director and lead actor, respectively, is an intricate flow of genres, a maze of narrative styles, including the family drama, the fiction, fairytale, fantasy, the teen movie and the metaphysical thriller. Many have pointed out parallels with the most disparate works from Sense, to Wayward Pines, to Stranger Things, to The Leftovers, to Westworld, to Alfred Hitchcock, to the movie Room. Netflix, the platform in wich you can see the show from December 16, described it as "a unique experience that stretches the limits of what long-form storytelling". 

But what is it about The OA? It tells about the story of Prairie (Brit Mar-ling), a blind girl, who returns home after the mysteriously received back her sight, and after disappearing for seven years. Where was all this time? An episode after another, are 8 of variable duration between 30 and 70 minutes, the woman who now wants to be called "The OA" (in the Italian version, "the PA") reveals her truth to a group of teenagers and their teacher. And here things get complicated. 

Born in Russia, the daughter of an oligarch, survives a near-death experience and then end up in the United States where was adopted by a childless couple. One day while playing the violin in the subway was noticed and later abducted by a men, a doctor (Jason Isa-acs aka Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter), who locks her in a glass cage with other people who have had metaphysical experiences, obsessed with the idea to find out what's in the afterlife. With a slow rhythm, overlap mystery and dreamlike, oscillating constantly between reality and fiction, truth and lie, dividing audiences between those who cry to the head-work and those who consider the series a broken promise or, even, an absurdity.

Feel like : Brooke Shaden

Overcoming the veil separating reality from the imaginary. That's what makes Brooke Shaden with her works. The artist born in 1987 in Lancaster, United States, with her cam-era writes a poem, draw a dimension between life and elsewhere. Brooke Shaden, as The OA's Prairie, outlines a reversed world, where images are allegories, symbols, fairy portraits, metaphysical suspended between real and unreal, dream and reality.

Dress like: adidas, Off-White, Chloè

In The OA fashion doesn't matters. Counts only the story told by the mysterious blonde girl re-returned after disappearing into thin air for years. Prairie for most of the time wears the same flowered dress, cream cardigan and denim jacket who has when she was kidnapped. Once home, she chooses a neutral look, consisting of hoodies and fair islewool sweaters. It seems the physicality of the character vanishes, because she is different and elsewhere, beyond life, in an astral plane where the body is only a negligible middle, an impediment that must kill to reach the truth.

Think like: The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia by David E. Hoffman, The Book of Angels, Homer's The Iliad and Encyclopedia of Near Death Experiences

The OA is, as evidenced by many critics, "a metanarrative that crosses different genres by using narrative techniques of the fairy tale and science fiction, adding a touch of modernity to Fringe and Westworld". And, as such, inside it hides an intricate maze of inspiration, quotations, metaphors and symbolism. Difficult to identify them all. Some people compares to classic fairy tales like Little snow girl or figures of folklore as Rumplestiltskin, but also to Orlando novel by Virginia Woolf for its experimental construction, dilated rhythm and dreamlike component. Certain are the influences of four books: The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia by David E. Hoffman, The Book of Angels, The Iliad of Homer and Encyclopedia of Near Death Experiences. Together these works, which were found under Prairie's bed by French, seem to be the source of the story told by the girl, perhaps a clue that kidnapping, metaphysical experiences and everything else are true only in her mind. To find out, we must wait for the second series of The OA.

Sound like: "Wood" by Rostam Batmanglij

Brit Marling has revealed that one of her big inspirations for The OA was the song "Wood" by Rostam Batmanglij and said: “This story touches a lot of dark places, but ultimately reaches for something very bright and expansive. Sometimes while I was working on the character in my imagination, I would listen to Rostam's song, and it would remind me of that dazzle”. The former member of Vampire Weekend and brother of Zal Batmanglij, who with the actress has created the series, composed the soundtrack of the show along with Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans. The music of the new Netflix project includes music by Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein, Autolaser, Swedish House Mafia, New Radicals, Majical Cloudz and evocative "The Rocket Builder (Io Pan!)" by Johann Johannsson which in the fifth episode highlights the discovery of mystical movements (choreographed by Ryan Heffington, the man who invented Maddie Ziegler's dance in Sia video "Chandelier"). A curiosity: the interpreter of Rachel, one of the people kidnapped by dr. Hunter, is the indie songwriter Sharon Van Etten.

Taste like: borsch

Love like: Brit Marling aka Nina aka Prairie aka The OA

The OA is not easy to love. Too absurd and airy-fairy certain ideas, exciting and winning other. And what about the metaphysical movements which seems to be a dance made by a group of junkie possessed people who practice aerobics? But there is Brit Marling aka Nina aka Prairie aka The OA. She seduces and the story she tells holds true addict.