Chuck Klosterman is best known for his music journalism and essays on pop culture, but he is also an occasional novelist and has published His first novel Owl of the center In 2008Now, partners Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater have collaborated on an adaptation of the book, written by Linklater and starring Rabe as a new high school English teacher in a small North Dakota town filled with eccentrics, disappointments and the occasional broken dream.
OWL OF THE CENTERSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: Chuck Klosterman’s novel Owl of the centerAs I understand it, the film centers on three characters who inhabit Owl, a small fictional town in North Dakota whose downtown, which gives the title to the town, features, in the fall of 1983, three bars, a grocery store, a hardware store, and a movie theater about to close. In this film adaptation, Julia (Rabe), who temporarily settles in Owl to teach high school English while her husband finishes his graduate degree, is much more central to the story than Mitch (August Blanco Rosenstein), one of her teenage students, and Horace (Ed Harris), an Owl veteran whom she befriends. Mitch and Horace are essentially supporting characters on either side of Julia’s thirtysomething point of view, and who influence how she views Owl, which becomes a place where she relives her younger, wilder days. In other words, the film is mostly about Julia going to bars and taking stock of her haphazard life, and whether it’s really gone the way she expected.
What will it remind you of? For the most part, it will remind Klosterman’s readers of what it would be like to hang out at a bar with him and listen to Elvis Costello, even if Owltown doesn’t offer enough popular culture to fuel the kind of extended discussions he favors in his essays. There are also hints of Noah Baumbach’s arrested-development, Gen X, and millennial comedies, though not as sharp or as funny, and possibly some Hold Steady songs, too, though, well, they’re the same.
Performance worth watching: It’s clear that the film is aiming to showcase Rabe, but it’s Ed Harris who feels most present in the role of Horace, an unofficial guardian of Owl’s story who also cares for his incapacitated wife; it seems clear that he could have taken the film further than it’s ultimately asked of him. Vanessa Hudgens is also spot on as Naomi, Julia’s co-worker.
Memorable dialogue: There are some odd, catchy moments where characters slip into what appears to be direct speech to the camera, such as when Naomi announces: “When I was 19, I was a sex kitten. When I’m 59, I’ll be 60 pounds overweight. Now, I’m 33 and you’re getting drunk with me.” “Was that for me, or for some audience, or…?” Julia asks.
Sex and skin: Sexuality permeates Julia’s evenings, as her status as a presentable blonde newcomer to the city, sans wedding ring, makes her a star attraction in the bars, and she falls madly in love with the enigmatic local Vance Druid (Henry Golding). But sexual desire never translates into anything more than a sensation; this is a movie that’s long on talk and short on action.
Our opinion: Lily Rabe really puts herself out there with Owl of the centergiving a risky performance that, unfortunately, ends in ruin. Some of it isn’t her fault: She resembles her mother Jill Clayburgh to an eerily enough degree that at times her character Julia seems played by a deepfake. But Rabe also co-directed this film, which tries so hard to enliven its sometimes lonely, unpopulated setting that its star has to do something big to compete. The result is a movie that often seems to be killing time until its main character manages to have some big crisis moments down the stretch, attempting to give some meaning to the aimless scenes of drifting thirtysomethings, teenage angst, the occasional touch of old-man wisdom. The film is at its clumsiest in weaving the story of a hard-partying English teacher with her students (of whom there often seem to be very few, even for a small town). Neither Julia’s fleeting connections with them nor the occasional, deeply specific hostility she faces seem particularly believable or, for that matter, eventful; The big dramatic event of the last ten minutes feels obligatory and predictable. Perhaps this can all be traced back to Klosterman’s material; some novels just don’t lend themselves well to 90-minute films.
Our verdict: SKIP IT. Owl of the center It has a certain offbeat charm simply by virtue of telling a story that Hollywood studios don’t usually do, adapting a novel that is obviously more about character and atmosphere than plot. But the film’s nervous impatience with itself makes it increasingly insufferable.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer based in Brooklyn. He is a regular contributor to The AV Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts on www.sportsalcohol.comalso.
Owl of the center
