Station Eleven is one of my darling books of the twenty-first century thus far, and its blend of charming realism, clockwork plat, post-apocalyptic put, and complicated social organization offers enough imaginative detours for HBO Max ’ s 10-episode television adaptation to have fun with. ( The first three episodes debut Thursday. Two episodes follow every Thursday thereafter until the finale drops all by its lone on January 13. )
But Station Eleven is besides a script about the world in the build-up to and consequence of a devastating plague that kills most of world. Its resonance with the present consequence is so strong that in March 2020, days before most of the US locked down, Vulture interviewed Mandel about her book ’ sulfur overlap with the portray. So it might seem ghoulish to tell a floor about a disease so deadly only one in 1,000 people survives it ( heavy air quotes ) “ at this moment in history. ”
What ’ s more, Station Eleven makes several adaptation choices that change some of the core elements of Mandel ’ s fresh. Two characters who have one chance meet shortly before the Georgia Flu ravages the world are now blessing companions for the early days of the revelation, and the book ’ south independent villain has been drastically rethought. It would have been therefore easy to create a version of this floor where those changes made the series toothless and without a point.
yet few fictional works in the wake island of Covid-19 have felt as corrective to me as this television receiver adaptation from Leftovers writer Patrick Somerville and Atlanta director Hiro Murai. Rather than imagining something black, Station Eleven takes Mandel ’ s ledger and amps up its sense of a cozy post-apocalypse, where world comes together, rather than drifting apart. I entered the series profoundly doubting, and I left it feeling at least semi-hopeful for what world might so far become, even after the end .
“This strange and awful time was the happiest of my life”
In book form, Station Eleven follows three characters who have a chance confluence onstage at a Toronto field during a production of King Lear. Kirsten is a child actor, playing the function of one of Lear ’ south daughters as a child. Arthur is a brash movie star trying to burnish his reputation by playing one of Shakespeare ’ s greatest characters. And Jeevan is a manque doctor who attempts to save Arthur ’ s biography after he collapses from a heart attack during a operation .
The book then traces three timelines. It hops fore 20 years into the future to follow Kirsten as an adult, riding around the Great Lakes with the Traveling Symphony field company in a worldly concern after the Georgia Flu killed then many. It stays with Jeevan in the present, as he holes up in an apartment with his brother and watches the world end from senior high school above. And it jumps back into the past to trace the rise of Arthur alongside his many friends and colleagues. Mandel drops in brusque interstitial chapters that tell the stories of assorted early characters significant to the narrative, particularly Arthur ’ s ex-wife Miranda, whose chapter is my favored character of the bible .
In television receiver series form, Station Eleven shifts several things around. The most celebrated change it makes is having Jeevan ’ south ( Himesh Patel ) encounter with Kirsten ( Matilda Lawler as a child, Mackenzie Davis as an pornographic ) at the dramaturgy leave in him trying to help her find her parents. ( In the book, they meet briefly, then go their break ways. ) As he tries to help Kirsten, his baby calls to say the Georgia Flu is in Chicago ( the series ’ new setting ), and it ’ s very, very bad. He and his brother, Frank ( Nabhaan Rizwan ), take Kirsten in, forging a association between the characters that didn ’ t exist in the book but grounds the series .
There are tweaks like this throughout Station Eleven, the television serial, all of which serve to underscore connections between characters, some more improbable than others. Mandel ’ mho book is a lovely meditation on world ’ randomness resilience and the ways in which art can bring us together, but it ’ s besides a clockwork plot, where each and every element of the history has a cause to exist, all of which knit together at the end. Done good ( as it is in the book ), this technique can feel a piece like magic, as the generator reveals all her cards. Done ill ( as it has been on therefore many television shows ), a clockwork plot can feel like a writer insisting that everything is connected, in a way that rings assumed .
Somerville ’ s previous miniseries — the Netflix Emma Stone and Jonah Hill vehicle Maniac — felt a little besides much like Somerville insisting everything is significant. So I had at least some trepidation about his accept on Station Eleven, where so many things could have gone then, so incorrect. But Somerville besides learned how to create a clockwork plot for television from Leftovers co-creator Damon Lindelof, and he ’ sulfur brought all of those lessons to bear on Station Eleven, but without the former series ’ occasionally ultra-grim tone. ( It was ultra-grim with function, but we are not here to relitigate this. )
An even smarter adaptation option is to alternate between storytelling modes. The odd-numbered episodes expand the aforesaid interstitial episodes to integral hours of television receiver. The Miranda chapter, my front-runner in the book and now my darling sequence of the show, makes up the entirety of the one-third episode, as Miranda ( Danielle Deadwyler ) goes on a long, strange journey to try to get second dwelling for the funeral of the love of her life, evening as the world ends around her.
meanwhile, the even-numbered chapters trace pornographic Kirsten ’ s journeys with the dramaturgy company, performing Shakespeare and exploring the sorrows and the joy of a post-apocalyptic world. What plot the series has pops up in these episodes more than in the others, but the plat wouldn ’ metric ton workplace without the character development from the more standalone odd-numbered episodes. The alternation between storytelling modes besides gives the show a pleasant rhythm once you fall under its spell .
Somerville ’ s approach to the material is possibly best echoed by a line a quality says in the series ’ trailer : “ This strange and nasty time was the happiest of my life. ” The television receiver version of Station Eleven utilizes all those unlikely connections to express wonder at the fact that human beings form any connection at all .
Jeevan and Kirsten should not know each other. In a huge universe, on a satellite teeming with people, that they would find each other and form a familial bond has every curious against it. But they do find each other. And they do alliance. flush amid the goal of the world, there will be moments of bleak beauty and hope .
What if the end of the world was also really beautiful?
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23099221/himesh_patel_matilda_lawler_1.jpg "Station Eleven made me want to live in the post-apocalypse 1")
The unexpected beauty of the end of all things is besides reflected in the series ’ guidance, particularly in the two episodes directed by Murai ( the first and third ). Murai is one of the big ocular stylists working in television correct now, and the first few seconds of the series serve as a thesis statement for everything to follow .
In the open series of shots, godforsaken boars root around in the plant liveliness inside a quad once built and occupied by humans. A few scraps of newspaper score this as the field where Arthur ( here played by Gael Garcia Bernal ) died onstage act Lear. Murai cuts to what remains of the seats, now covered in verdant greenery. And then he match-cuts to those seats on the night of Arthur ’ s final examination performance. The dramaturgy is now a exist outer space, one where people will enjoy a bang-up free rein. But it feels less alive than it did when its only occupants were plants and boars .
television has been overwhelmed by a glut of serial that lean besides heavily on gray, cloudy visuals and digital color grading that reduces besides much of the picture to dishwater dogsled. If Station Eleven failed on every early degree, it would at least be worth watching for how it bucks this swerve. The post-apocalyptic sections burst with a natural tinge palette, dominated by green. The mid-apocalyptic sections are bare white, thanks to the bamboozle everywhere, with warmer tones for the apartment where Jeevan, Kirsten, and Frank hole up. And the sections set in the past are warm still, as diverse characters remember their happiest moments .
The use of color allows viewers to immediately know where they are in the appearance ’ randomness timeline, which could feel excessively complicated otherwise. The serial never manages something as visually astonishing as those opening shots, but there were several moments per episode where I found myself profoundly impressed by the show ’ s willingness to tell its floor in images, even as the dialogue concocted by Somerville and his writers is poetic and rarely distraught. ( I did say rarely. It ’ mho sometimes quite distraught. )
I can quibble. I think a couple of the series ’ episodes try way excessively intemperate to either cram in besides much report or spread excessively short story over a full hour of television receiver. ( The episodes are all around an hour long, though some are ampere curtly as 43 minutes. ) Dan Romer ’ south mark is often adorable, but sometimes, the blaring music felt a little like it was trying to tell me what precisely I should feel. And I occasionally felt like I needed a chart to track the bouncing around in time, particularly in some of those odd-numbered flashback episodes .
But those are only quibbles. Most of all, I ’ meter glad Station Eleven has arrived at the end of a long, hard class for so many of us, because its embrace of rejoice and black bile and its sleep together of snow-clad expanses mark it as an incidentally perfect vacation temper miniseries. In one sequence, for case, new Kirsten, surrounded by a die earth, performs “ The First Noel ” for Frank and Jeevan, twinkling lights in the background. At the end of the class, in the cold and the iniquity and melancholy, we come together to make things a little warm, a little bright, a little more elated. indeed why wouldn ’ t we do that at the end of the world, excessively ?
Station Eleven debuts Thursday on HBO Max. The first base three episodes are available that day, with two episodes each debuting on December 23, December 30, and January 6. The finale arrives January 13. Yes, as mentioned, this is weirdly appropriate Christmastime screening .
