Chuck Klosterman’s epic essays on popular culture often expose the bitter wind that blasts beneath the beats we bop along to, the blockbusters that burrow into our brains and the books that serve as our bibles: It’s enjoyable but ephemeral, essentially a pleasant way to pass time until we push off from this earthly realm and to distract us from that inevitability. Whether happy or sad, the works that endure remind us of those inescapable circumstances. It’s a sometimes grim but earnest and human perspective, which has kept Klosterman fresh for so long.

The film adaptation of Klosterman’s first novel, Downtown Owl (available Tuesday on VOD), aims for the same thing. Case in point: Its soundtrack features numerous original recordings or covers of songs by Elvis Costello, patron saint troubadour of life’s troubles. Some are period-accurate to the film’s 1983-84 setting and others are anachronistic, like a mawkishly slowed cover of “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” by Sharon Van Etten, who was a toddler in the years during which Downtown Owl is set. 

The film’s Costello-inspired thesis is ostensibly the opening of “Beyond Belief,” a 1982 song showcased here in its original format: “History repeats the old conceits / The glib replies, the same defeats.” You see it in wanderers seeking respite in the small North Dakota hamlet of Owl like Julia Rabia (Lily Rabe), a teacher taking a break from a bad marriage to set up shop there.

You see it in the locals who can’t leave, too, like Horace Jones (Ed Harris), a staple at the diner who uses dishing about town history as a distraction from his wife’s medical woes; Vance Druid (Henry Golding), a one-time quarterback whose legendary fear in the face of a ferocious defense essentially ruined his life; and Mitch Hrlicka (August Blanco Rosenstein), nicknamed “Vanna White” for his need to buy an extra vowel for his name and besotted by a girl who is nice to him but also the latest victim of a predatory football coach (Finn Wittrock).

It’s a down town, Owl, one character says. And while the title purposefully omits the space in which that sentiment breathes, so does the adaptation — written for the screen by Hamish Linklater, who co-directed with Rabe (his real-life partner). Running under 90 minutes before credits, Linklater attempts to cram in as many of his favorite dialogue passages as possible, in addition to an insane amount of characters (about which there is at least a funny meta-joke).

Ostensibly following the consequences of Julia’s unexpected fondness for a quartet of students, Downtown Owl plays like a harried, hurried version of The Holdovers crossed with the skittering neuroses and teeth-chattering temperatures of the Coen Brothers’ Great Plains excursions. The brothers’ longtime musical collaborator T. Bone Burnett serves as executive producer and composer, and his score’s odd alternation between folksy trio and swelling strings certainly doesn’t help to ground the film. Neither does a grating performance from Jack Dylan Grazer (Shazam!) as an obnoxious student, Wittrock embodying what is essentially a live-action version of South Park’s PC Principal, or an overreliance on barrel distortion effects that pinch the sides of widescreen winter compositions to emphasize the fishbowl we’re staring at.

Rabe offers fleeting flashes of the compelling complexities her mother, Jill Clayburgh, brought to similar movies during her heyday in the 1970s. But when it comes to immersive, inward glances, Downtown Owl has been whittled to the nubs — with self-conscious style, too much screaming and a conclusion larded with direct addresses to the camera, dueling voiceovers and a final moment that tries to condense Klosterman’s general aesthetic but feels laughably cruel. At least the joke about Foreigner, Boston and Journey is vintage Klosterman. Too much of the rest of Downtown Owl will have you wanting to escape this place along with most of the locals.