The fantasy that rock ‘n’ roll will save the world has been rambling around since damn near the dawn of the genre, but I think it’s fair to say we’ve seen mixed results. Anthems about peace, love and understanding were political rallying cries in the 1960s, and sexual liberation sure has been liberating. But we do still seem to have an awful lot of fascism around here, and conservatism is so rampant that we may only be a few years away from outlawing music altogether unless it’s approved by Kid Rock. (The worst kind of rock.)
Still, the dream lives on in films like “O’Dessa,” a post-apocalyptic musical fable in the vein of cult classics like “Rock and Rule,” “Six-String Samurai” and “Vicious Lips.” “Stranger Things” breakout Sadie Sink stars as the title character, the last in a long line of troubadours who wander the wastelands bringing “comfort to the disturbed” while “disturbing the comfortable.” She’s prophesied to save the world with her magical guitar, built from the wood of a tree that’s been struck by lightning. What can we say? O’Dessa is a natural.
Her first mission into the dystopian plains, a land ravaged by toxic waste called “plazma,” goes badly. She’s bamboozled by carnies and loses her precious guitar. To get it back, she has to travel to Satylite City, ruled by the hypnotic 24/7 television personality Plutonovich (Murray Bartlett), and earn enough money to get her axe out of the pawn shop. She slaps a makeshift guitar together out of literal garbage and falls for a singer and abused sex worker, Euri Dervish (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), whose pimp Neon Dion (Regina Hall) is also Plutonovich’s electrified enforcer.
“O’Dessa” opens with the promise of epic adventure, fables of seventh sons on a hero’s journey, and an open world to explore a la “Fallout.” But quickly it settles in, focusing almost entirely on O’Dessa and Euri’s romance, and the small but significant following she develops while busking. A revolution doesn’t rise up and take back the city through violence or even a giant musical number. Maybe writer/director Geremy Jasper (“Patti Cake$”) didn’t have the budget for that. Or maybe he always wanted his film to be a bit of a tease.
The movie dances on the knife edge of hope and cynicism, like a saga about the Wyld Stallyns told in a “Black Mirror” episode, and ultimately comes to harsh conclusions about the power music actually has to make a difference. Maybe it’s the musicians who have to do the work, not so much their rockin’ tunes. I can get behind that. The music makes a difference, but it’s not an excuse to sit out the physical act of rebellion. That’s pretty cool.
The post-apocalyptic future of “O’Dessa” is that strange modern amalgam of cheap retro sets and cheap CGI. Even microbudget dystopian genre flicks like “Warrior of the Lost World” had a handmade quality to them, earning their place in the “Mad Max” ripoff pantheon with manual labor. Movies like “O’Dessa” adopt that aesthetic but add a patina of contemporary computer graphics, and I’m not entirely sure the approach works. There’s a lack of consistency to the film’s imagery that makes it hard to become immersed inside its fictional world, since a new visual effect always comes along and breaks the reality every few minutes.
Setting that quibble aside, a rock musical like “O’Dessa” only works if it sufficiently rocks, and “O’Dessa” somewhat rocks. The plentiful songs are huge or intimate or both, depending on the needs of the moment. None of them are especially amazing, and I can’t seem to hum one right now for the life of me, but I remember how they felt in the moment. The soundtrack works dramatically in the movie, and that’s all that counts while the movie is playing. But in our memories, where movies live 99% of our lives, that music hasn’t left as powerful an impression, which may hamper the film’s ability to develop its own cult following as time goes by.
Still, nobody can say the cast isn’t game. Sink carries the film easily, cutting a heroic figure against the wastelands, pluckily plucking her guitar as an underdog performer on the streets, and playing the proper hero when the time finally comes for action. Harrison Jr. is the damsel in distress, a romantic beauty who inspires the protagonist to do great things, a part he plays to the nines, adding more depth than the screenplay does. The two stars click on screen and the costume design, by Odile Dicks-Mireaux (“Without Blood”) and Anna Munro (“Last Night in SoHo”), blurs gender lines and musical influences, giving the characters distinct and evolving personalities. Orville Peck masks, Colonel Sanders suits, hard rockin’ nuns with futuristic face masks; it’s a smartly realized and smartly dressed future, at least as far as the clothes go.
Does it mean very much? Not especially. Then again it’s a fable, not “Hiroshima, Mon Amour.” Jasper is painting with a very thick brush, and he gets away with it. “O’Dessa” is a bracing, energized, larger-than-life parable about the power and, ultimately, the limitations of music and the entertainment industry to change the world. The film tries to shine a light in the darkness, reminding the audience that art is supposed to help you live your life, not just permanently escape it.
Then again “O’Dessa” does criticize the 24/7 entertainment cycle as a dangerous opiate for the masses that must be destroyed at all costs, while simultaneously playing exclusively on Disney’s Hulu streaming service. So maybe the world won’t be saved after all.
