‘Station Eleven’ Travels From Apocalyptic to More Hopeful Days
variety.comBob Verini The Max Original limited series “Station Eleven,” which is now available to stream on HBO Max, demanded the envisioning of both a world collapsing from a catastrophe, and one reconstructing itself thereafter.
Fair enough; as filming continued, COVID was prompting plenty of thoughts about the apocalypse and its aftermath. Emily St. John Mandel’s source novel, in which mysteries and hints are posed early on, only to be explained much later, also involves much whipsawing back and forth in time.
How were viewers to be kept oriented in the course of working out an exhilarating yet demanding 10-hour puzzle? A crack team of directors and designers, assembled by showrunner Patrick Somerville (“The Leftovers”), conceived a scheme to exploit familiar vistas, and marshal and repurpose contemporary materials, into a set of specific visual cues.
The goal was to guide the audience through this unique futuristic tale and bring out the core theme: hopefulness in the face of despair.
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