For some reason, there is a certain tendency towards fantastic fictions that remind us of the pandemic we are experiencing. Something that understandably causes a certain allergy. The HBO Max series ‘Estación eleven’ (‘Station Eleven’) is the latest to join this television trend and, if you give it a chance, you will have before you one of the latest jewels of this 2021.
Based on the novel by Emily St. John Mandel, this miniseries imagines a world ravaged by Georgia Flu, a deadly variant of swine flu that ends up decimating the planet. Patrick Somerville (‘The Leftovers’), as main screenwriter, takes us between Year 0 of this pandemic and 20, in which a group of survivors travel the North American great lakes region representing Shakespeare.
Mckenzie Davis as Kirsten is our anchor point with this post-apocalyptic world. A young actress of this troupe that, as a child, she saw how her idol Arthur Leander (Gael García Bernal) dies on stage and is welcomed by a stranger, Jeevan (Himesh Patel), thanks to which he survived for a few months.
A luminous experience
I do not want to go ahead of events because, of course, it is better that you discover it for yourself, because it is one of these things that the less we know the more surprise we will get, even though it must be recognized that the series is not particularly novel. Or at least in the sense that she’s not shy about using genre tropes. Of course, everything shows it in a thankfully luminous way.
The proliferation of the science fiction genre on television makes it increasingly difficult to find particularly unexplored terrain and, while I consider the series’ turn of the screw quite original, it’s hard not to think of several precedents watching its first episodes.
We have an example in the comic to which the title refers and that seems to have a certain importance in what is happening (hello, ‘Utopia’) and implies a certain level of conspiracy. The luminosity in times of apocalypse can also bring to mind ‘Sweet Tooth’ and thus with small, and not so small, details of the series.
A series that uses, precisely, its resources. Rarely can we find such fluid and effective time jumps on television; In addition to how he manages the characters and describes them efficiently, achieving that in a few moments, we empathize with them. Narratively speaking, few hits they can be put except for some plot development that is not completely fine-tuned.
Running from the intensity
On the other hand, fiction avoids getting intense when it comes to getting philosophical. While ‘Hamlet’ and his vision as the definitive treatise on humanity is a constant in the series, the script is not interested in bombast and intrinsic elevated speech many times. It is always, or usually, pragmatic.
All of this adds up to a world amazingly built by Hiro Murai and company, which reinforce the impression that, more than a typical post-apocalyptic drama, ‘Estación Once’ wants to celebrate life. The resurrection of civilization and the world, if we get poetic.
In short, ‘Station eleven’ is the last jewel of this 2021. An absorbing and powerful miniseries that sheds light on areas that, not due to being traveled, are less effective.