Series Review: HBO’s Station Eleven is Magnificent
Station Eleven popped into my HBO Max menu and the promo photo for the limited series didn’t call to me so I ignored it. The show kept popping up so I clicked play and was immediately hooked. The series opens with Arthur (Gael Garcia Bernal, Mozart in the Jungle) onstage playing King Lear. A surprising event happens which abruptly closes the play and takes Kirsten (Matilda Lawler) a child actor playing young Goneril in the play, and Jeevan (Himesh Patel) an audience member who escorts her home when her chaperone goes AWOL, on a life changing adventure. Station Eleven is a magnificent journey of resilience, hope, and community set in a global pandemic. It is one of the most moving limited series I’ve seen during the pandemic. The story takes place during a global pandemic in 2021 and 20 years after the pandemic. As the connections among the characters are revealed the series beautifully reflects the gift of community. Station Eleven is the first post-apocolyptic series I’ve experienced that focuses on hope.
After living with our real life pandemic for the past two years, watching the pandemic portion of the series was scary and relevant. The theater scene was filmed in 2019 and had 400 background performers in the audience. It was jarring to see that many people in an enclosed space together. When I clicked on this series I didn’t know it was set during a pandemic. When I saw that it was I wasn’t sure I had the bandwidth to watch but I am so happy I did. There are Black people who live in the future in this world!! The strength of this series lies in it’s diversity. Even before the pandemic we see a multi-racial Chicago with all identities and abilities reflected. The writers deftly jump back and forth in time. At one point the actor in the first scene Arthur meets a woman we see walking in the first episode, Miranda (Danielle Deadwyer, The Harder they Fall) by chance in a diner. He asks her out for a drink in this weirdly charming way that drew me in. This chance meeting evolves into this relationship is bittersweet and heartbreaking. I absolutely love the chemistry between these two people and their relationship was a solid throughline of this beautiful tale. Danielle Deadwyler’s Miranda is this complex combination of elegant vulnerability, sorrow and calm beauty. She nails this role and touched my heart each time she appears on screen. She’s fascinating to watch. What a lovely artist.
There are so many great performances in this series. Every single person in this series is spectacularly great. Matilda Lawler is outrageously good as Young Kirsten. This kid is fantastic. She’s simultaneously open, adorable, and wise.
Himesh Patel’s Jeevan is one of my favorite characters in this show. We don’t often get to see single people in caregiving relationships with kids. Kirsten and Jeevan are thrown together unexpectedly and they become family.
The major spine of Station Eleven is how vital community is to making our lives. We are interconnected in so many ways. Our stories are how we connect to a higher purpose outside of ourselves. We connect to joy and process trauma through our stories. Station Eleven presents storytelling in the apocolypse as a vital tool for survival. Adult Kirsten is an actor who tours with Travelling Symphony, a group of actors and musicians who tour settlements in a yearly circuit. Each community welcomes them with open arms. The fact that this group of American actors and musicians pick a Shakespeare play for each season and that the survivors of this pandemic are Black, Brown, Queer people of all abilities and all gender identities reflects the America where I live and it’s so cool to see the world broken down to it’s essence art rises. Station Eleven’s writing and directing team are multi-racial intergenerational all identities which brings authenticity and nuance to each and every person embodied onscreen. I LOVE these people!!! What a gift.
Don’t be fooled, the stakes are high in the past and the present. The end of society comes with danger that occurs when resources become scarce. There is a mysterious danger present in all of the storylines that keep you feeling just enough conflict to keep you on the edge of your seat. Helen Huang and Austin Wittick’s costume design is ingenious and Dan Romer’s score touches the heart in all the right places. I loved Station Eleven. I’m finding it hard to describe how this series moved and inspired me. I cried deep tears during several episodes. All I know is that this profound limited series helped me to remember how vital the creative arts and community are to humanity and that creative artists have value to society that transcends captialism. If stories live inside us, we must birth them out into the world even with the costs.
Station Eleven is based on the novel by the same name written by Emily St. John Mandel. The showrunner is Patrick Somerville (The Leftovers)and has episodes directed by Hiro Murray ( Atlanta, Childish Gambino: This is America), Helen Shaver (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), Jeremy Podeswa, (Game of Thrones) and Lucy Tcherniak. when Kirsten is an adult. She’s a part of a group of actors and musicians the Travelling Symphony who perform Shakespeare and concerts to a circuit of settlements.
All 10 episodes are now streaming on HBOMax.
The podcast X ray vision with Jason Conception takes a wonderful spoiler free deep dive into the show that shares beautiful insights. He’s so smart!!!
HBOMax has also released a companion podcast for Station Eleven which I also highly recommend.
J9
