Station Eleven assessment: The HBO Max present invents a comfy post-apocalypse

The 2021 vacation season looks like an exceptionally unusual and doubtlessly terrible time to launch a miniseries adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel’s good 2014 novel Station Eleven.

Station Eleven is one among my favourite books of the twenty first century to this point, and its mix of magical realism, clockwork plotting, post-apocalyptic setting, and complex construction presents sufficient imaginative detours for HBO Max’s 10-episode TV adaptation to have enjoyable with. (The primary three episodes debut Thursday. Two episodes observe each Thursday thereafter till the finale drops all by its lonesome on January 13.)

However Station Eleven can be a e book in regards to the world within the build-up to and aftermath of a devastating plague that kills most of humanity. Its resonance with the current second is so sturdy that in March 2020, days earlier than a lot of the US locked down, Vulture interviewed Mandel about her e book’s overlap with the current. So it might sound ghoulish to inform a narrative a few illness so lethal just one in 1,000 individuals survives it (heavy air quotes) “at this second in historical past.”

What’s extra, Station Eleven makes a number of adaptation selections that change among the core components of Mandel’s novel. Two characters who’ve one probability assembly shortly earlier than the Georgia Flu ravages the world at the moment are boon companions for the early days of the apocalypse, and the e book’s important villain has been drastically rethought. It might have been really easy to create a model of this story the place these adjustments made the collection toothless and with no level.

But few fictional works within the wake of Covid-19 have felt as restorative to me as this TV adaptation from Leftovers author Patrick Somerville and Atlanta director Hiro Murai. Reasonably than imagining one thing bleak, Station Eleven takes Mandel’s e book and amps up its sense of a comfy post-apocalypse, the place humanity comes collectively, moderately than drifting aside. I entered the collection deeply skeptical, and I left it feeling no less than semi-hopeful for what humanity would possibly but develop into, even after the top.

“This unusual and terrible time was the happiest of my life”

In e book type, Station Eleven follows three characters who’ve an opportunity assembly on stage at a Toronto theater throughout a manufacturing of King Lear. Kirsten is a baby actor, enjoying the function of one among Lear’s daughters as a baby. Arthur is a brash film star attempting to burnish his repute by enjoying one among Shakespeare’s best characters. And Jeevan is a would-be physician who makes an attempt to avoid wasting Arthur’s life after he collapses from a coronary heart assault throughout a efficiency.

The e book then traces three timelines. It hops ahead 20 years into the longer term to observe Kirsten as an grownup, driving across the Nice Lakes with the Touring Symphony theater firm in a world after the Georgia Flu killed so many. It stays with Jeevan within the current, as he holes up in an condominium together with his brother and watches the world finish from excessive above. And it jumps again into the previous to hint the rise of Arthur alongside his many associates and colleagues. Mandel drops in brief interstitial chapters that inform the tales of varied different characters vital to the narrative, significantly Arthur’s ex-wife Miranda, whose chapter is my favourite a part of the e book.

In TV collection type, Station Eleven shifts a number of issues round. Probably the most notable change it makes is having Jeevan’s (Himesh Patel) encounter with Kirsten (Matilda Lawler as a baby, Mackenzie Davis as an grownup) on the theater lead to him attempting to assist her discover her mother and father. (Within the e book, they meet briefly, then go their separate methods.) As he tries to assist Kirsten, his sister calls to say the Georgia Flu is in Chicago (the collection’ new setting), and it’s very, very dangerous. He and his brother, Frank (Nabhaan Rizwan), take Kirsten in, forging a connection between the characters that didn’t exist within the e book however grounds the collection.

There are tweaks like this all through Station Eleven, the TV collection, all of which serve to underscore connections between characters, some extra unlikely than others. Mandel’s e book is a stunning meditation on humanity’s resilience and the methods wherein artwork can deliver us collectively, but it surely’s additionally a clockwork plot, the place each factor of the story has a purpose to exist, all of which knit collectively on the finish. Executed nicely (as it’s within the e book), this system can really feel a bit like magic, because the writer reveals all her playing cards. Executed poorly (because it has been on so many TV reveals), a clockwork plot can really feel like a author insisting that every part is related, in a means that rings false.

Somerville’s earlier miniseries — the Netflix Emma Stone and Jonah Hill automobile Maniac — felt a little bit an excessive amount of like Somerville insisting every part is vital. So I had no less than some trepidation about his tackle Station Eleven, the place so many issues may have gone so, so mistaken. However Somerville additionally discovered create a clockwork plot for tv from Leftovers co-creator Damon Lindelof, and he’s introduced all of these classes to bear on Station Eleven, however with out the previous collection’ often ultra-grim tone. (It was ultra-grim with objective, however we aren’t right here to relitigate this.)

An excellent smarter adaptation alternative is to alternate between storytelling modes. The odd-numbered episodes increase the aforementioned interstitial episodes to whole hours of tv. The Miranda chapter, my favourite within the e book and now my favourite episode of the present, makes up the whole thing of the third episode, as Miranda (Danielle Deadwyler) goes on a protracted, unusual journey to attempt to get again house for the funeral of the love of her life, even because the world ends round her.

In the meantime, the even-numbered chapters hint grownup Kirsten’s journeys with the theater firm, performing Shakespeare and exploring each the sorrow and the thrill of a post-apocalyptic world. What plot the collection has pops up in these episodes greater than within the others, however the plot wouldn’t work with out the character improvement from the extra standalone odd-numbered episodes. The alternation between storytelling modes additionally offers the present a nice rhythm when you fall below its spell.

Somerville’s strategy to the fabric is probably finest echoed by a line a personality says within the collection’ trailer: “This unusual and terrible time was the happiest of my life.” The TV model of Station Eleven makes use of all these unlikely connections to specific marvel at the truth that human beings type any connection in any respect.

Jeevan and Kirsten shouldn’t know one another. In an enormous universe, on a planet teeming with individuals, that they’d discover one another and type a familial bond has each odd in opposition to it. However they do discover one another. They usually do bond. Even amid the top of the world, there will probably be moments of uncooked magnificence and hope.

What if the top of the world was additionally actually lovely?

HBO Max

The surprising fantastic thing about the top of all issues can be mirrored within the collection’ route, significantly within the two episodes directed by Murai (the primary and third). Murai is among the nice visible stylists working in tv proper now, and the primary few seconds of the collection function a thesis assertion for every part to observe.

Within the opening collection of photographs, wild boars root round within the flora inside an area as soon as constructed and occupied by people. A couple of scraps of paper mark this because the theater the place Arthur (right here performed by Gael Garcia Bernal) died onstage enjoying Lear. Murai cuts to what stays of the seats, now lined in verdant greenery. After which he match-cuts to these seats on the evening of Arthur’s last efficiency. The theater is now a dwelling area, one the place individuals will get pleasure from an amazing play. However it feels much less alive than it did when its solely occupants had been crops and boars.

Tv has been overwhelmed by a glut of collection that lean too closely on grey, murky visuals and digital shade grading that reduces an excessive amount of of the image to dishwater mush. If Station Eleven failed on each different stage, it could no less than be price looking forward to the way it bucks this pattern. The post-apocalyptic sections burst with a pure shade palette, dominated by inexperienced. The mid-apocalyptic sections are stark white, due to the snow in all places, with hotter tones for the condominium the place Jeevan, Kirsten, and Frank gap up. And the sections set previously are hotter nonetheless, as varied characters bear in mind their happiest moments.

Using shade permits viewers to immediately know the place they’re within the present’s timeline, which may really feel overly difficult in any other case. The collection by no means manages one thing as visually astonishing as these opening photographs, however there have been a number of moments per episode the place I discovered myself deeply impressed by the present’s willingness to inform its story in photographs, even because the dialogue concocted by Somerville and his writers is poetic and infrequently overwrought. (I did say hardly ever. It’s typically fairly overwrought.)

I can quibble. I feel a few the collection’ episodes attempt means too exhausting to both cram in an excessive amount of story or unfold too little story over a full hour of TV. (The episodes are throughout an hour lengthy, although some are as quick as 43 minutes.) Dan Romer’s rating is commonly beautiful, however typically, the blaring music felt a little bit prefer it was attempting to inform me what precisely I ought to really feel. And I often felt like I wanted a chart to trace the bouncing round in time, significantly in a few of these odd-numbered flashback episodes.

However these are solely quibbles. Most of all, I’m glad Station Eleven has arrived on the finish of a protracted, exhausting 12 months for thus many people, as a result of its embrace of pleasure and melancholy and its love of snowy expanses mark it as an by accident excellent vacation season miniseries. In a single episode, as an example, younger Kirsten, surrounded by a dying world, performs “The First Noel” for Frank and Jeevan, twinkling lights within the background. On the finish of the 12 months, within the chilly and the darkness and melancholy, we come collectively to make issues a little bit hotter, a little bit brighter, a little bit extra joyful. So why wouldn’t we do this on the finish of the world, too?

Station Eleven debuts Thursday on HBO Max. The primary three episodes can be found that day, with two episodes every debuting on December 23, December 30, and January 6. The finale arrives January 13. Sure, as talked about, that is weirdly acceptable Christmastime viewing.