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 bear in mind telling a good friend the world was beginning to really feel like Station Eleven. Life imitating artwork.
One of the memorable and haunting photographs of Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 speculative novel Station Eleven 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 fashionable before-times novel is an after-times HBO Max unique restricted collection. As an alternative of COVID-19, Station Eleven’s world is devastated by the Georgia Flu. Its story of collapse and rebirth returns to search 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 isn’t from the flu: Film star Arthur Leander (Gael García Bernal) is taking part in 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, virtually everybody within the theater will probably 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 grow to be unwitting actors on a post-apocalyptic stage the place there aren’t any docs, 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 bear in mind injury,” Kirsten repeats 20 years later, quoting a comic book e book 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 instances 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 e book 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 bounce from the earlier than to the throughout to the after; between Kirsten and Jeevan and Arthur; and likewise 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 enables a virus to proliferate, in spite of everything.
One of the unsettling of the COVID-era catchphrases is “new regular.” And whereas the display screen adaptation of Station Eleven issues itself extra with the fast 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 provide beginning, they go swimming, they learn comedian books they usually curate museums. Strangers grow to be household. Stranded airport denizens grow to be a neighborhood. The world is as totally different between Yr 20 and Yr One because it was between Yr One and “pre-pan.”
On this means, Station Eleven depicts not the tip of the world — not a earlier than and after — a lot because the inflection level of common methods collapse, a principle that posits extra of a cyclical sample, a waxing and waning of societal complexity all through historical past. (Sally Rooney’s 2021 novel Stunning World, The place Are You additionally references this principle.) 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 typical.
A up to date 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 might prefer it to be. In contrast to the novel, during which Kirsten’s reminiscences of Yr One have been misplaced, Davis’s Kirsten remembers so vividly that she primarily lives in each timelines without delay, even returning to the early collapse and conversing along 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 isn’t even dystopian then, however a somber grasp at utopia.
Adapting Station Eleven for the small display screen
The challenge 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 photographs — the ghost airplane, the horse-drawn pickup vans, the failure of {the electrical} grid — whereas amplifying a number of the e book’s quieter moments. The variation 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 most important change in HBO’s adaptation is the therapy of the prophet (Daniel Zovatto), whose easy villainy within the novel fuels the plot and offers the stakes in Yr 20. Right here, his “there isn’t any earlier than” perception system is extra enigmatic and empathetic and thus, frankly, extra fascinating. This model of the prophet is understandably extra enticing 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 anticipate, 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 difference 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 yr. Even when the bubonic plague shuttered Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, the present went on. Artwork has its personal survival intuition.