"But I wasn’t drawn to acting because I wanted
to be desired. I was drawn to acting because I
felt it would allow me to become the whole,
embodied person I remembered being in childhood
-- one that could imagine freely, listen deeply
and feel wholeheartedly."

Brit Marling, in the New York Times

Season two is even more of a high wire act, energized with
exponentially more thrilling ideas. New protagonists
are introduced, old characters are reconfigured. The
wastelands of suburban Michigan and abandoned mines in
upstate New York give way to the Big Tech haven of San
Francisco; Oakland and Treasure Island also have starring
roles. Data science (used to analyze dreams), virtual
gaming are big plot points; a mysterious house full of
portals and hidden passages that might be the next Meow
Wolf franchise becomes the linchpin of the season.
Straddling two, and then three alternate dimensions,
the show absolutely dares anything. I know that
"multiverse" ideas are dime-a-dozen and corrupted by comic
books these days*, but what "The OA" does with this conceit
is uniquely interesting and relevant.

In the new dimension, Karim (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is
an ex-FBI field agent turned private investigator. He
used to lure Muslim youths into terrorism activities
and arrest them. For redemption, he agrees to search
for a lost youth Michelle (Buck's doppelganger), which
leads him to the House in San Francisco owned by Nina
Azarova. Now in Nina's body, OA struggles to assess her
memories. She finds that Hap has trapped the Original
Five in in a mental hospital on Treasure Island. Such
is the peril of jumping dimensions; Rachel, with the
golden voice, is a deaf-mute here, and Homer somehow
cannot remember his past. The freedom-captivity theme
may take a backseat in season 2, but Hap's drafting of
the mute Rachel to be his unwilling assistant is
reminiscent of the blind Prairie Johnson's role in his
lab, and of her life with her foster family which
contrive to keep her drugged and dependent.

Most of the New Five, including Steve but notably not
Buck, are now human vegetables in Hap's secret lab.
With these living deads, Hap hopes to find a map
between dimensions, to enable targeted jumps, avoid
accidents. His work intersects with the interest of
a tech billionaire -- Nina's boyfriend -- who conducts
research on dreams. These protagonists slowly converge
to a truly shocking finale in the House.

It is telling that the pan-dimensional Khatun is ditched
in season 2. (No explanation is given; unlike lesser
series, "The OA" is more interested in ideas than banal
internal mythology.) Taking her place are two emissaries.
The giant octopus which communicates with Nina Azarova
on stage to entertain hipsters in a nightclub is a big
hit with critics. It is a stunning spectacle that grows
organically out of the OA story line; Homer is supposed
to have swallowed an octopus from an aquatic tank that
resembles their glass prison during his NDE escapade.
The showy scene is reminiscent of _Mulholland Drive_,
and the researcher-of-dreams character in season 2
(Liz Carr) is also clearly Lynchian. Much as I love
Naomi Watts, in her early years her acting occasionally
has a theatrical, ready-for-my-closeup quality. Brit
Marling is arguable a superior, more natural actress
here than even Watts is in _Mulholland Drive_.

The other emissary is a world-weary "traveller" between
dimensions played by Irene Jacob. She does it using
motorized miniature figurines to perform the five
movements. This hints at the commercialization of
interdimensional transition as some sort of tourism,
which is a commentary of the eventual banalization of
all exalted discoveries, and a deconstruction of the
series' premise. This traveller has merged with many
doppelgangers, including the French actress "Irene
Jacob" who starred in Kieslowski's masterpieces _The
Double Life of Veronique_ and _Three Colors: Red_!
Her body seems to die after each jump, but Jacob's
character returns to give OA advice about symbiotically
existing with hosts in the new dimension. Perhaps
the episodes are not mean to follow strict chronology?

Ignored by critics, the Jacob character arc's is more
far-reaching than the viral octopus': it links the
the "OA" with the pet themes of the great humanistic
filmmaker Krzystof Kieslowski. Kieslowski examined
doubled lives, second chances, entwined destinies.
He told stories about characters who live in different
countries, timelines, possibilities (in _Blind Chance_
as well as in _The Double Life of Veronique_), but who
retain the same decency, same soul. The French
actress was Kieslowski's Muse Extraordinaire, the
avatar of mystical connections in his films, and
in the series she fittingly advises the OA that people
who have close ties in one dimension also share
intertwined fates in others. (Jacob might also be
the one to have said that all dimensions are found
within ourselves, but I may have misremembered.)

Interviewed shortly after completing his monumental
_Three Colors_ Trilogy, Kieslowski said that he merely
wanted to create fairy tales his daughter would enjoy in
an increasingly materialistic, culturally debauched world
(my paraphrase). I think he was being characteristically
and deceptively self-deprecating. Invoking the Biblical
Ten Commandments and the rebirth of Christ, his films
are nothing less than attempts at a new New Testament.
They aim at humanistic Myth-making, a new spiritualism
of our time, in the process perhaps redefining, renewing
humanity itself. "The OA" is more secular, but based
on Marling's celebrated NYT article, one can perhaps
make a similar bold claim for the Netflix series.

---------------------------------------------------------

The Irene Jacob connection is the first thing that calls
to mind the novel _American Gods_. I haven't read the
book, and have only seen the pilot of the TV series filled
with glowering, gun-toting, murdering, posturing "macho"
characters who turn me off at once. But I am familiar
with the premise. Old religions are waning in influence.
(Perhaps so are the old Canons of story telling.) Taking
their place are New American Gods who are manifestations
of modern life like movies, the internet, and all-pervasive
popular media. The book was perhaps prescient; when it
won the Hugo and Nebula awards, Marvel fanboy movies
that colonize our subconsciousness did not even exist.

This passing of the gods theme is rounded out in later
episodes. Not all of it works; I don't care for the
episode "Mirror, Mirror" (not written by Marling or
Batmanglij), clearly inspired by Japanese Horror like
_The Ring_ in addition to _American Gods_. But it is
effective at advancing the plot: a jumbled TV
transmission gives the the New Five crucial information.
And it has its touching moments; one member of the Five
is sacrificed to a new vile god -- the America
abomination of drug addiction.

It all comes to a glorious resolution in the season
finale. The New Five (what is left of them) conclude
their American Odyssey, driving from to Michigan to the
Pacific coast, evading Amber alerts and police along the
way (no one bothers to tell the parents about the trip).
In the dilapidated Treasure Island Museum, which shares
the location of the mental ward in the OA's world, they
enact their dimension-hopping movements. In the OA's
universe, Hap also starts up his giant mechanical dolls
(adapted from Irene Jacob's) and shoots the awakened
Homer in the back. Over in Nina Azarova's house, Karim
solves the final puzzle, opens the Rose Window which is
the portal to other worlds, and rescues Michelle from
what looks like a stage where "The OA" is produced. As
the OA crosses dimension, she hovers in the air, directly
in Karim's line-of-sight in this brief convergence of
three worlds. It is a lovely, overpowering image, and
she is in the precise privileged position we the
audience are in -- both within the story and without,
emotionally involved in the drama yet also hovering above
it. Seeing the artifice and shimmering intellectual
scaffolding only enhances, not diminishes, our admiration
for the fearlesss screen-writing.

Yet the Original Angel falls -- much like Weronika breaking
her leg in one of her doubled lives. It is revealed
that she has merged into a critically injured Brit Marling
the actress on the set of "The OA," with stage-hands and
assistants nervously buzzing around her. Jason Isaac, her
husband there who plays Hap, rushes her to the hospital.
Steve, who has jumped two dimensions and bypassed Hap's
captivity, is last seen chasing the ambulance, in a scene
reminiscent of the season 1 finale.

Earlier, Karim has found an inscription by T.S. Eliot on
his way to the Rose Window:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

The verse harkens back to his own exploits inside the House
in episode 1, but it also describes Steve's arc. What is
more, it may refer to the origin of "the OA" itself, while
the series is still in production. The grand discovery
Karim has been pursuing is then the New God of streaming
TV, which has doubled our real lives, is now inextricably
embedded in them. This God is dominating our lives in
ways old myths and religion pervaded our ancestors'. So
the radical breaking of the "fourth way" is no glib
solipsism; it is aimed squarely at the symbiotic nature of
media, technology, human life, and the new belief system
that has formed (or not sufficiently formed) among them.
The ramifications of our new mode of living has barely
been acknowledged, let along fully understood.

Where could "the OA" possibly go from there? Is it meant
to explore the techno-humanistic nexus in further detail,
in a dramatized Wired Magazine sort of way, or flee from
it in another radical departure? Sadly the planned seasons
3-5 never happened. The creators owes us a sequel, a
novelization!

--------------------------------------------------------

The above description barely scratches the richness of
season 2. There are so many poetic, otherworldly images
and moments not necessarily related to this one theme.
In interviews, the creators credit visual and narrative
influences from Adam Curtis, Hilma af Klint, and Leonora
Carrington. In a fitting cosmic convergence, I watched
the passage where Nina's billionaire boyfriend espouses
the vulnerability of our planet Earth hours after reading
almost identical words from William Shatner upon his
trip to outer space. The evil Hap, who literally consumes
his victim to gain their knowledge, has his moment of
illumination and humanity when he claims to hear
electronic signatures from the rings of Saturn in the
NDE experiments. When the OA emerges from the House on
the branches of a tree stretched out like open arms,
that magical being -- perhaps the Tree of Life and of
Knowledge of old folk lores -- lights up like the very
image of the Internet. Unlike so many TV and streaming
series, the mystery that is "the OA" inspires not fear
but awe, poetry, and the yearning for new horizons.
It is the fruits of an epic imagination that deserves
our deepest admiration.

(For A.)

*One needs look no further than Netflix's _Cloverfield
Paradox_, starring amazing actresses Gugu Mbatha-Raw and
Zhang Ziyi but is blessed with zero imagination.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)