SOUND OF MY VOICE

One of the reasons I started this blog was to be able to share what I love. I’ve been wanting to write about these two for a long time… but I had a hard time figuring out how to talk about them and their work. So much can be said about it. Like all great art, I always finish their films feeling kind of enlightened… and kind of dumb. Like I need to rewatch endlessly to fully grasp all the nuances of their films/show. In that sense, anything I say about their work can be expanded upon so much… I feel like whatever I write won’t be enough. So bear with me here as I do my best to try and share with you what it is that I love about these incredibly beautiful creators and their work. Needless to say, as always, there will be spoilers to the films they have written as well as “The OA”. You’ve been warned.

 

Brit and Zal have such a unique vision, knowledge and sensitivity that completely impregnates their work. There seems to be a set of recurring themes (and even storytelling devices) in their work. This doesn’t mean their work is repetitive. On the contrary, when watching their work, one sees a progressive expansion of their ideas, their thoughts… their world. They always ask the big questions about life and the current systems our society has in place. The moral limits of science, angels, time travel, life after death or travelling through dimensions are a few of the topics they have dabbled in. They make you question everything you take for granted. In this sense, watching their films often feels like a spiritual experience. Few storytellers have had this effect on me. All of Brit and Zal’s pieces have.

 

You only need to watch some interviews with them to be in awe. They actually taught themselves how to write for crying out loud! Zal jokes that after graduating AFI he still didn’t know how to make films, so Brit decided to learn how to write. This was also a chance for Brit, who is also an actress who stars in all of their creations, to write interesting female characters she wasn’t finding in the scripts she was reading. If you want a bit more of an insight into their minds, I highly recommend you watch the interview below with them. However, please note there are some spoilers for their work in this interview, so if you don’t like that, watch their stuff first before diving into the video. This interview is deeply inspiring for aspiring filmmakers and also for creatives in general. I just love listening to these two. 

 

 

“Sound of My Voice” (Zal Batmanglij, 2011) was their first feature film collaboration. It’s about two documentary filmmakers who try to infiltrate a cult led by Maggie, a woman who claims to be from the future. Like “The OA”, this film has a central character who tells a story to a group of selected people she brings to her circle. Healing through storytelling seems to be one of their recurrent themes. There’s a cathartic element in storytelling, one that I’m sure, as writers, they also feel. This is why I find the “storyteller” figure in their work so interesting. Also, there’s this “secret handshake” they have to learn that reminds me also of the dance movements in “The OA”. I have this theory… and I might be wrong… but I kind of feel like they had many ideas for this movie that didn’t make the final script. I believe they took part of the research they had for this film, reprocessed it and used it for “The OA”. I am not saying this is a negative thing. There’s just so many familiar elements in both pieces… yet they are both completely different works of art and I love them both.

 

Their next film was “The East” (Zal Batmanglij, 2013), where they were joined by Alexander Skarsgård and Ellen Page. When an agent for a private intelligence firm infiltrates an anarchist group that attacks major corporations, she finds herself questioning her life’s purpose. “The East” depicts an incredible fight by two sides that leaves you questioning which is the lesser of two evils. As opposed to “Sound of My Voice” and “The OA”, this film has no sci-fi elements, which maybe makes it hit closer to home. Is it justified to do something highly immoral to stop people who are also acting in an immoral way? In that case, does that actually make you a good person? Does that make you a bad person? How do you live with yourself after that?

 

Finally, we reach “The OA” (2016-2019). It’s mysterious, onyrical, beautiful, mystical, thrilling, feiminine, sweet, magical and like everything else they’ve done, incredibly spiritual. It is, creatively speaking, the culmination of their work and it’s one of the most special series ever created. 

 

 

I think what Zal and Brit do so brilliantly when writing is dosing information. It always takes you a while to get the full picture of the story they’re trying to tell. You’re constantly peeling layers off that onion. “The OA” is the ultimate example of this. Just so you get an idea… it takes you four episodes to find out what OA stands for. Let me oversimplify the first few episodes if you will. 

 

Episode 1: A blind girl who had disappeared years ago is now back and has had her sight restored.

Episode 2: She puts together this new eclectic family for herself and tells them why she disappeared: she was kidnapped.

Episode 3: We see what her life in captivity was like. We realise that the people who are captured with her are being experimented on but we don’t understand what for.

Episode 4: We see how OA recovers her sight and we find out the meaning to the show’s title. We find out what the experiments are for.

 

Again, this is a very simple way of explaining the first few episodes, but I just wanted to show how the trickling of information comes about in this show. Storytelling-wise, to me, it’s brilliant. 

 

Just to be clear, this doesn’t mean that by episode four you have found out everything you need to know about this world. Far from it. Its mythology keeps expanding. I mean, it’s a show that mixes angels with inter-dimensional travel for crying out loud. Season 2 of the show is to me one of the best examples on how to greatly expand the mythology of your show.

 

I cannot put into words how important and innovative this show is. Storytelling-wise, it kind of reminds me of the first season of “Lost” (JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Jeffrey Lieber 2004-2010). This show also handled the paced delivery of information very well. It also created its own mythology. However, I think “Lost” got a bit… well… lost in its own mythology, which led to its lesser quality (in my humble opinion) in the following seasons. Although story-wise they have nothing in common, it also kind of reminds me of “Twin Peaks” (Mark Frost and David Lynch, 1990-1991; 2017). Just because both shows create this strange, mystical mythology and have such strong imagery. Finally, I also sense a bit of “The Leftovers” (Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta, 2014-2017) in it. Or better yet, I get some of the same feelings I got while watching “The Leftovers”. Like, the start of the second season of “The OA” reminded me about the start of the second season of “The Leftovers”: we are suddenly dealing with new characters we’ve never seen before… and we’re left wondering how they will integrate with the story we already know.

 

Sadly, as you may know, “The OA” was cancelled. This means I’ll never get to find out how the show will continue after its second season ended in a jawdropping cliffhanger and Rosalía’s “De aquí no sales”. You should have heard the scream I made. It started when the cliffhanger happened and it became louder as Rosalía came on. When the announcement of the show’s cancellation came, I felt genuinely shocked. Like many other fans I was in denial and started doing the five movements to bring the show back to life.  I started reading about conspiracy theories about the show not being cancelled and the news just being a big publicity stunt to a surprise Season 3 after a very “meta” season 2 ending. Even though Brit was quick to dispel those rumors, a big part of me likes to hold onto this amazing theory. 

 

In any case, it all points to the fact that “The OA” is cancelled (in this dimension, at least). If you, like me, are feeling like you have this huge void in your life, I’ve found this Reddit post with recommendations on what to read/watch after “The OA” that I want to start working through. I hope it helps.