Evaluation: Station Eleven’s HBO adaptation got here at a bizarre, however good, time

In early 2020, earlier than the lockdown, earlier than the coronavirus even had a reputation, the passengers and crew aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess started a two-week quarantine off the coast of Japan. I keep in mind telling a good friend the world was beginning to really feel like Station Eleven. Life imitating artwork. 

Probably the most memorable and haunting photos of Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 speculative novel Station Eleven just isn’t a cruise ship however an airplane. An airplane assembly tarmac, slowing to a cease and sitting dormant with out opening its doorways or releasing its passengers, sealing the an infection inside. It’s Schrödinger’s airplane, its passengers already ghosts earlier than they die. 

Now, in late 2021, the wildly common before-times novel is an after-times HBO Max unique restricted collection. As a substitute of COVID-19, Station Eleven’s world is devastated by the Georgia Flu. Its story of collapse and rebirth returns to seek out an viewers that might be too weary to show to dystopian hypothesis for leisure. As a result of now Station Eleven jogs my memory of the early pandemic: grocery hoarding, overrun emergency rooms, face masks. Artwork imitating life. 

The primary dying we see just isn’t from the flu: Film star Arthur Leander (Gael García Bernal) is enjoying the titular position in a stage manufacturing of King Lear. Baby actor Kirsten Raymonde (Matilda Lawler, performed as an grownup by Mackenzie Davis) watches Arthur succumb to a coronary heart assault whereas viewers member Jeevan Chaudhary (Himesh Patel) interrupts the present to carry out CPR. Arthur dies on stage. Quickly, nearly everybody within the theater will likely be lifeless, too.

The fictional plague is each extra lethal and extra contagious than COVID-19, killing some 99% of the earth’s inhabitants in a matter of weeks. Those that survive change into unwitting actors on a post-apocalyptic stage the place there aren’t any medical doctors, no nations, no provide chain, no web, no celebrities, a world the place luck and destiny decide who lives or dies, and youngsters study to kill or be killed. 

“I keep in mind injury,” Kirsten repeats 20 years later, quoting a comic book guide referred to as Station Eleven that was given to her by Arthur earlier than his dying. Kirsten has improbably survived the pandemic and joined The Touring Symphony, a roving Shakespeare troupe, spreading artwork and tradition from the earlier than occasions to a Nice Lakes area that’s now dotted with small settlements of survivors coexisting in relative concord, however with an ever-thrumming baseline of hazard. 

Civilization in a post-pandemic world

The plot unfurls throughout not solely timelines however characters, and Kirsten’s comedian guide is the portkey that reveals the tangled internet we weave — the six levels of separation, the missed connections, the “what a small world!” coincidences. The world of Station Eleven is small, the ensemble solid like that of a late-career Garry Marshall movie. We soar from the earlier than to the throughout to the after; between Kirsten and Jeevan and Arthur; and in addition Arthur’s first spouse Miranda (Danielle Deadwyler), his second spouse Elizabeth (Caitlin FitzGerald), their son Tyler (Julian Obradors), and his good good friend Clark (David Wilmot). We see how this interconnectivity each creates and dismantles civilization. It’s this similar connectedness that permits a virus to proliferate, in spite of everything.

Probably the most unsettling of the COVID-era catchphrases is “new regular.” And whereas the display screen adaptation of Station Eleven issues itself extra with the instant aftermath of the collapse than the novel does, it’s nonetheless primarily a narrative of rebuilding normalcy. Not solely do individuals proceed to carry out Shakespeare within the after-times, however they fall in love, they offer beginning, they go swimming, they learn comedian books they usually curate museums. Strangers change into household. Stranded airport denizens change into a group. The world is as totally different between 12 months 20 and 12 months One because it was between 12 months One and “pre-pan.”

On this manner, Station Eleven depicts not the top of the world — not a earlier than and after — a lot because the inflection level of common techniques collapse, a idea that posits extra of a cyclical sample, a waxing and waning of societal complexity all through historical past. (Sally Rooney’s 2021 novel Lovely World, The place Are You additionally references this idea.) Our infrastructure is tenuous in its complexity, a truth we have grappled with in actual life amid provide chain disruptions and the coining of “important employee.” So it’s considerably comforting to have a look at collapse by way of the lens of enterprise as regular.

A recent soundtrack does the heavy lifting for the collection’ level about continuity, and each recognizable music is a reminder that this unfamiliar world is not as far eliminated as we would prefer it to be. In contrast to the novel, wherein Kirsten’s recollections of 12 months One have been misplaced, Davis’s Kirsten remembers so vividly that she basically lives in each timelines directly, even returning to the early collapse and conversing together with her youthful self in a fever dream. Her performances are animated by her grief, and the collection appears to say that artwork is not only a comfort prize, however a present. Maybe Station Eleven just isn’t even dystopian then, however a somber grasp at utopia.

Adapting Station Eleven for the small display screen

The venture of any book-to-screen adaptation is to recapture the magic of the unique utilizing the instruments of the brand new medium. And showrunner Patrick Somerville (of Netflix’s Maniac) achieves this objective deftly, bringing to life a few of Mandel’s most indelible photos — the ghost airplane, the horse-drawn pickup vans, the failure of {the electrical} grid — whereas amplifying a number of the guide’s quieter moments. The difference turns Jeevan and Kirsten’s likelihood encounter into the collection’ emotional hinge, a revision that appears so becoming I needed to double-check it wasn’t within the supply materials.

The largest change in HBO’s adaptation is the remedy of the prophet (Daniel Zovatto), whose easy villainy within the novel fuels the plot and supplies the stakes in 12 months 20. Right here, his “there isn’t any earlier than” perception system is extra enigmatic and empathetic and thus, frankly, extra attention-grabbing. This model of the prophet is understandably extra engaging to Kirsten, too, battling with the preservationist ideology behind the Museum of Civilization. Even post-collapse, human tradition finds its footing astride the conservative and the unconventional, and the prophet jogs my memory of the burn-it-all-down, can’t-go-back-to-normal rhetoric of our present pandemic, the place systemic inequality is lastly foregrounded within the cultural dialog. 

Nonetheless, the miniseries is quieter than plenty of viewers will count on, given the premise and style, and by complicating the prophet, the story loses a lot of its momentum. Tonally, moments of lightheartedness really feel dissonant and even cringey, just like the message of hope is a capsule the actors could not fairly swallow. Maybe the variation would have felt totally different if it had arrived earlier inside our personal pandemic, however in fact it was the pandemic that delayed filming.

The Touring Symphony’s mantra is “As a result of survival is inadequate.” As a bit of tradition in a post-COVID world, the HBO miniseries has taken up this mantra itself, a reminder of dystopian fiction’s raison d’etre. It’s why everybody began streaming Contagion and studying Camus final 12 months. Even when the bubonic plague shuttered Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, the present went on. Artwork has its personal survival intuition.