Station Eleven

Remembering
Damage

Station Eleven
USA December 2021 - January 2022
Ten episodes Paramount

Warning: To the spoilers, we're the spoilers.

It’s rare that a piece of art comes along which is so overwhelming in both its emotional weight and technical brilliance that I am at a loss as to how to convey a sense of it to others. But that’s how I feel about the ten episode mini series Station Eleven, based on the novel of the same name by Emily St. John Mandel (which is now hopefully en route to me from ebay, so I can read it). I don’t know what the differences are between this show and the source novel but, I soon will and I’ll post a separate review of that book in a month or two, I suspect.

Station Eleven is set before, during and after a devastating global pandemic (all at the same time). In the present, the flu virus has got out of hand and mutated into a lethal and unforgiving killer, which wipes out the majority of the world in a couple of weeks. If you catch it you’re dead (or, as somebody in a broadcast at one point says... we weren’t ready for something with a 1 in 1000 survival rate).

The story is not presented in a linear fashion (although, it does get more linear towards the end) and it tells the story of separate pockets of characters who all have links to each other over their past or future lives, which you discover over the course of the ten episodes in some quite astonishing ways, as the narrative hops from one character in one time zone to another and slow connections gradually dawn on the spectator.

Primarily we start with the death, on stage, via a heart attack (or possibly from the flu as it happens the first evening of the outbreak) of an actor called Arthur Leander, played by Gael García Bernal (don’t worry, because of the nature of the structure of the thing, Bernal is in quite a few episodes in flashback... depending on your point of view in the story). Jeevan, played by Himesh Patel, is the first to realise that Arthur is dying on stage and rushes up to try and help. Instead, he helps one of Arthur’s co-stars, eleven year old Kirsten (played brilliantly in her younger iteration by  Matilda Lawler) escape the area but problems arise and he can’t get her home, so he holes up with her at his brother’s apartment to try and wait out the unfolding disaster... while everyone they know dies from the virus. Arthur gave Kirsten one of five graphic novels, written and artworked by his ex-wife Miranda, played by Danielle Deadwyler. The book is called Station Eleven and tells of a spaceman, Doctor Eleven, who presents a conundrum to the people who read it and helps them find purpose in their struggle to survive ‘the before’... both the pre-pans (aka pre-pandemic) and the newborns who use half remembered fragments of it as their ideological basis, without getting too much into the complexities of the show, to fuel their possible terrorist campaign against those who came before.

Other figures and actors of note are the brilliant Mackenzie Davis as the post-apocalyptic survivalist, grown up version of Kirsten, David Wilmot as Arthur’s best friend Clark, Daniel Zovatto as The Prophet (his connection to these people is made clear at one point about half way through the show), Caitlin FitzGerald as Arthur’s other ex-wife and, as the composer and founder member of a post-apocalyptic travelling Shakespeare company, The Travelling Symphony, who wander the world putting on shows for various small, surviving communities, we have actress Lori Petty (it’s nice to see Tank Girl in something again).

And it’s actually a simple story in some ways, about the people who are left behind and the connections made through various lives which come together at certain points but, if it wasn’t told in such a rich tapestry of imaginative and mutually supporting edits, which spark big emotions on the realisation of their connections, then it probably wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. My understanding is that this structural concept is taken directly from the novel and so I’m guessing the series creator, Patrick Somerville, did a really good job here at keeping it somewhat close to the spirit of the source.

You’d think, from the through line, that the show would be something of a one trick pony but it’s not. I’m leaving a lot out of my synopsis because there are lots of ideas and situations which you need to discover for yourself. Characters fade to the background and then return in episodes which highlight just what happened to them, when they fell out of one of the other character’s lives. So, for instance, it seems pretty clear from episode two that a main character is dead... even though you know you’ll see him again in flashback. However, much later in the series, you find that he’s not and that he has a kind of rebirth in some ways (no, I’m not talking about Arthur... he stays dead) and you’re on tenterhooks throughout the whole last episode as the two characters who lost each other 19 years before are miraculously in the same place against all odds... and still manage to miss each other in the same room (and I’m not going to tell you what happens right at the end but... you’ll want to stick around... I wonder if this is one of the deviations from the novel?).

There’s lots of Hamlet too, if you’re into that kind of thing (I’m really not into Shakespeare myself). And possibly way too many Star Trek references throughout the show although, I was pleased that one of the earliest exhibits in Clark’s Museum Of Civilisation is one of the recent, new wave Mego Mr. Spock action figures.

There’s also some great next level stuff happening where, for instance, Doctor Eleven turns up in a few cases as, presumably, someone is seen in a mild hallucinatory state, although the interpretation is perhaps best left to the audience... or, for example, an episode where both the younger and older versions of a character are interacting in the same space. It’s all rather brilliant and it’s all held together with some nice (if mostly unknown to me) needle drop songs and a really beautiful score by Dan Romer (sadly only released as an electronic download and not on a proper CD. What a stupid thing to do!).

That being said, my one and only criticism of the show also comes from the score, although it’s possibly not Romer’s fault. There’s definitely a case of temp trackitus in the show as a couple of scenes in a few episodes were clearly, it seems to me, cut together initially with passages from Mica Levi’s astonishing score to Under The Skin and the producers maybe didn’t want to leave it out. So Romer creates (and I suspect was forced to create) something very similar to the specific cue I’m thinking of for certain sequences in this show. And what he’s done is good but, for a little while there I almost thought they’d needle dropped the original cues in, it’s that close. Consequently, in certain scenes where I was supposed to be feeling a certain sense of tension, it just popped me straight out of the narrative to figure out where the cue initially originated came from. Which is not the best way to manage the music (or the composer) of your show, I reckon.

But yes, asides from that one thing and the possible sense of a rushed reunion for two of the characters near the end, I’d have to say that Station Eleven is easily one of the greatest pieces of art in television history. I’d recommend this to pretty much anyone interested or enamoured with film and televisual history and, frankly, it’s a huge crime that this show isn’t available on DVD or Blu Ray at time of writing. Instead, it’s been hoarded away by some TV and streaming channel to be the carrot for subscriptions rather than being allowed to flourish in the wild. An absolutely brilliant and, certainly, epic experience. More than worth your time.

The Aeronauts

James’ Hun And
The Aeronauts

The Aeronauts
2019 UK/USA Directed by Tom Harper
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very mild spoilers in terms
of the romantic content of the movie.

Directed by Tom Harper, The Aeronauts is one of those US co-productions with a distinctly British flavour, based on the real life antics of pioneering meteorologist James Glaisher in the 1860s. Starring the always brilliant Eddie Redmayne as Glaisher and the equally amazing Felicity Jones as his co-pilot on the venture, Amelia Wren, I was so entranced in this little ball of a wonderfully structured, cinematic gem that I was completely fooled in regard to the fact that, far from being a rock solid account of events as they took place in real life, there is a lot of fiction carefully grafted onto the source material to breathe life into the story. That is to say, the astonishing Mrs. Wren is, in fact, a complete fiction of a character... which makes me struggle a little with the restraint of one particular aspect of the story but I’ll come to that a little later. Suffice it to say, though, that Wren’s back story reads as completely convincing as any of the rest of the tale and it would be impossible for someone like me to tell what is what when it comes to seeing through the smoke and mirrors presented here. Not that I would want to do that, actually because... yeah... this is a truly entertaining little movie.

Okay, so  the film tells how Glaisher, with the help of his friend John Trew (played by Himesh Patel, who I thought was so good in Yesterday... reviewed here) approaches the recently widowed Amelia Wren, a couple of years after her husband died from falling from a hot air balloon flight the two were making (there’s more to that story but I won’t reveal it here), lifting her depression and hiring her as a co-pilot on a trip to get as far up as they can in the sky so that Glaisher can prove his theories about the atmosphere having layers and bring back enough research, or at least the start of research, to allow mankind to be able to predict the weather... something my various iphone apps still can’t do satisfactorily to this day. So next time you are looking at an app or show or weather report and want someone to blame for the blatantly false information based on meticulously researched guesswork, you can remember that you have James Glaisher to thank for it.

I love both lead actors in this movie and, of course, Redmayne and Jones already made a brilliant pair in their portrayals of Stephen Hawking and his wife in The Theory Of Everything (which I reviewed here). In this they are just as engaging and sharp as you would expect from them and it really helps to have two leads with such perfect chemistry because, frankly, the film is mostly a two hander set within their balloon... at least, that’s where the majority of the drama comes from.

In their quest to enlighten their audience, they are aided by a really ‘not bad’ script, in all honesty. The structure of the movie is such that the film starts with a bang just before the ballon is getting launched for its historic trip beyond the clouds and then, as the drama unfolds, one or other of the main characters will flash back to how they came to be in this position... in increments throughout the course of their current adventure... and just why they are exactly where they are (a bit like an old Marvel comic from the 1960s and 70s in that respect, I would say). The fact that they are both brilliant allows the narrative to soar through to the finish line with ease, using lots of comedy and personality clashes (to begin with) as Glaisher is the gruff, serious scientist (kind of) and Amelia is the wild, fun loving, entertainment seeker who demonstrates she can be more than just 'relied on' in a tight spot. This last demonstrated with some wonderfully fraught scenes of peril as the two characters race towards their final fate with death lurking in every gust of wind and with a truly brilliant final solution to slow the speed of their downward descent.

The film has a nice score, too, from Steven Price which, alas, has only been issued as the usual ‘quality challenged’, flat download and not put out on a proper CD... which means I won’t get the opportunity to hear it away from the main movie. However, it’s appropriate to the pacing and 'larger than life' shenanigans which go on in certain moments and beautifully compliments the visual information as it comes at you.

My one surprise (asides from a worrying scene with a dog early on in the film) comes in the form of the romantic element of the tale. It’s one of those movies where a burgeoning relationship is hinted at for the characters and it’s one which is never implicitly stated but certainly made a lot of in terms of the tone of the film. I was of the opinion then, as I watched it, that the two people obviously never ‘got it on’ in reality and so the moviemakers wanted to be true to life as much as possible, leaving the characters with a lot of things left unsaid. Which kinda made sense to me at the time. However, now that I know that Amelia Wren didn’t even exist in real life, I can’t think why the writers didn’t allow the romantic ‘sub plot’, as it were, to come to full fruition during the course of the film. I mean, everybody wants them to, don’t they?

Asides from this small puzzle and the fact that, in an age of CGI special effects, there is an underlying sense of sobriety in terms of taking the sheer spectacle of a hot air balloon credibly floating above 19th Century London at face value, I would have to say that The Aeronauts was one of the more enjoyable movies to get a cinema release this year and I’d gladly recommend this little slice of pseudo-history to anyone. The fiction of the thing may all be hot air but it certainly got this cinema goer to his final destination in as enjoyable a manner possible.

Yesterday

Star Gent’s Better Lone Key,
Part Dub, Fanned

Yesterday
UK/Russia/China
2019 Directed Danny Boyle
UK cinema release print

I should have seen this movie a lot sooner than I did, catching it now just on the last week or so of its cinema run. I’ve been listening to songs by The Beatles for most of my life now (well, around three quarters of it) and since their music plays such a huge part in this movie, I really should have got there sooner. Truth be told, I was kinda put off by the idea that this film was a romantic comedy... nothing against them, just not too many modern ones (post 1950s) done right. You get the odd couple per decade or two that are something special and, luckily for me this time around, this one is pretty good. Also, I had a slight accident recently so the day I had scheduled to go and see this was a day when, frankly, I wouldn’t have recovered enough to be able to walk to the cinema anyway.

But I got there in the end and this film was worth the wait. I find Danny Boyle a bit hit and miss as a director so I don’t go and see everything he does but this does have an almost unique premise so it was always going to make my ‘to see’ list at some point.

If you don’t already know the plot, Yesterday tells the story of main protagonist Jack, played by Himesh Patel, who is a struggling song writer/performer who, in spite of his brilliantly optimistic manager Ellie, played so well here by Lily James who kind of steals every scene she’s in, can’t make it big performing his own songs enough to get any interest and give up his job at a local supermarket and nor can he see the thing dangling right in front of his face... that he and Ellie are obviously attracted to each other but that he’s very late to the party in this regard. Then, one night when he has decided to call it quits and is riding home on his bike, the world experiences a phenomenon which causes all of the electricity everywhere to black out for about a minute. Because of this, a double decker bus hits Jack on his bike and he is knocked unconscious, waking in hospital with two big front teeth gone and lots of injuries which eventually heal. Now, the interpretation of what’s just happened here is left to the audience... did something happen to the world or did something just happen to him? Is there a religious intervention happening or did physics just slam the door. Did he even survive the bus? That’s all left up to you but, not long after he’s integrated back into his everyday life, he discovers that things have changed.

And the most prominent change to drive the plot is, nobody has heard of The Beatles or any of their songs. So, after some thinking, Jack starts ‘writing’ the hits of The Beatles and it’s not too long before he is on the road to what promises to be phenomenal world success. However, The Beatles aren’t the only things missing from the world as Jack remembers it and, it turns out, things which were once missing from our world are also now back in place... in a kind of changed way (no, don’t want to elaborate on that because it’s a bit of a spoiler).

And the film is brilliant, with some nice performances in addition to the two leads supplied by such wonderful character actors as Joel Fry, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Kate McKinnon  and some guy I saw in a Bridget Jones’ movie called Ed Sheeran who... well, frankly, I had no idea who he was when I saw that one and I still don’t really know but I’m guessing he’s some kind of modern pop star or some such. I’ve seen his face around somewhere.

Boyle keeps things nicely paced and there are some great comic moments which work in spite of the straight-laced delivery of Patel in the lead... or more than likely, work because of it. There are also some really nice little shout outs to The Beatles and I gave a chuckle when, for instance, one of the ‘post it’ notes with the titles to the songs that Jack is trying to remember, in a blink and you’ll miss it quick shot, is Revolution 9. Anybody who knows The White Album would tell you that this is an impossible track to cover. Not to mention the moment when Jack decides to launch his new album with a rooftop concert. There’s also a nice use of Beatles needle-drop, when the worldwide phenomenon that, effectively and depending on your interpretation, resets the world is just taking place... here the director uses the end build up from the Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band track A Day In The Life to heighten the tension. I just wish Boyle had stuck with it because he really could have done with that sustained piano chord once Jack is hit by the bus.

There’s also a kind of sub plot in the movie when you worry just what is going to happen to Jack’s plan when two sinister looking people start following him around the world with the lurking realisation that... Jack might not be the only one who remembers The Beatles. The pay off to this build up is absolutely brilliant, it has to be said... the film was moving so fast that I actually didn’t see things coming. Which is always a good thing because movies are mostly so predictable these days.

My one minor criticism, if I had to have one, is Jack’s ‘final solution’ to the problem of the guilt he is suffering for finding fame from the back of the songs of The Beatles. It makes no sense whatsoever because nobody in the version of the world he has suddenly found himself in is getting hurt by his deception. On the contrary, people’s lives are richer for having these songs in their life. So, yeah... there’s no real logic to the end of the movie here but, hey, at least it made a heck of a lot more sense than Avengers - Endgame (reviewed here) so there’s that.

The other possible problem, for me, is that the songs that the film makers chose to use from The Beatles’ huge play list are, with the exception of All You Need Is Love, tracks I normally skip. All the truly great Beatles tracks (again, with the exception of the brilliant All You Need Is Love) such as Strawberry Fields Forever (mentioned but not used), Eleanor Rigby (almost used but alas, unremembered in terms of the lyrics by Jack), I Am The Walrus, Tomorrow Never Knows, I’m Only Sleeping, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite, Magical Mystery Tour etc, from the 1966 - 1967 period where the group were at their absolute best, seem strangely absent.

Still, even so, Yesterday is a really great little movie and, frankly, Himesh Patel plays the role in such an interesting, throw away manor, while Lily James is... just wow... that I really didn’t worry too much that many of my favourites weren’t included. Lily James needs to be in more stuff, methinks. It’s a good little movie about a surreal premise where, as it should in real life (and hopefully always does), love wins the day and makes things right again. I’d grab this one again on Blu Ray, for sure.