Blog Rating: 9.25 out of 10
On April 26th, 1986, a nuclear reactor exploded at the Chernobyl facility near the city of Pripyat. The fire in the graphite moderator of the reactor caused that the clouds that transported enormous amounts of radiation covered the area. The incident was considered by many to be the worst catastrophe in history.
At the power plant, employees try to avoid a disaster that has already begun, but in Pripyat citizens continue to live a quiet life believing they are far from the fire. One of the most spooky moments of the episode is the non-verbal scene of children playing in that snowy ash, which are actually radioactive waste.
So, why is Chernobyl so creepy? There are several factors that contribute: realism, abandonment, arrogance and the denial of those in power; their main concern is to protect their dignity before the State.
"What is the price of lies?" Brilliantly structured and supported by the admirable performances of Jared Harris, Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård, Chernobyl is dark but has incredible power of attraction and it is written in a very good way.
Although the historical fact is known, which still today is defined as "the greatest nuclear disaster in history", every hour is more impressive than the previous one. The complex vision of the director Johan Renck and the scriptwriter Craig Mazin not only tells the facts: they dig out emotions, sensations, fears of individuals and of a whole nation.
A Soviet Union that is deeply proud and jealous of its knowledge, its discoveries, immortalized in the most paranoid period of the Cold War that is the basis of the errors that led to the Chernobyl disaster.
The series begins by showing us several characters that gravitate around the nuclear power plant that failed on April 1986: there are workers directly involved in the test, many of them without experience and without adequate information about what they are doing and directed by an arrogant and stubborn supervisor.
And then there are the government officials, who immediately decide to invent covers to keep the image of the USSR in the world dignified, arguing that nothing irreparable has happened.
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| Jared Harris |
Jared Harris plays Valery Legasov, a leading Soviet nuclear physicist who participates in accident management and he is the first to really understand what happened and what the magnitude of the disaster is. When he realizes a piece of graphite outside the building, he realizes that the nucleus has exploded, and only after many oppositions on the part of the officials who try to affirm that it is not so serious, the green light is given to try to contain the catastrophe.
Among the officials we find Boris Shcherbina, an immense Stellan Skarsgård who does an exceptional job in the character: the pitch of voice, the posture, the appearance and the attitude of a man who little by little is convinced and realizes the severity of the accident.
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| Stellan Skarsgård |
It is he who in the first official meeting with Gorbachov says that "The situation is stable, they told me that the level of radiation in the place is comparable to that of a chest X-ray". And he will be the first to realize that the truth is different: as Legasov says, the level of radiation at the Chernobyl plant is actually that of 4 million chest X-rays.
Initially, no one wants to accept the error simply because the dominant thought is that the Soviet Union can not make mistakes, so all the signs that lead in that direction must necessarily be false, exaggerated and alarmist.
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| Soviet symbols overlooking Pripyat near Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (picture by Alan Doyle) |
It is the worst nuclear disaster that humanity has known, leaving behind tens of thousands of dead and sick people, with dramatic ecological, economic and political consequences. Chernobyl is now a desert place, surrounded by ghost towns, which will continue radiating for a long time.
The miniseries recalls the horror experienced by hundreds of people and the slowness with which the authorities responded to protect the population. The worst nuclear disaster of the 20th century is the worst accident ever caused by man.
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| Emily Watson |
While firefighters rush to extinguish the fire that broke out after the explosion of the reactor, they do not know that they sign their death sentence. In this place, radioactivity reaches levels never registered before. Anyone who approaches the place risks his life. But nobody is aware of it, neither the firemen nor the inhabitants.
Sent to Chernobyl by Gorbachov, the duo formed by the Soviet nuclear physicist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård), to lead the Chernobyl commission of the government, which was later joined by the Belarusian nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), will have to find solutions to face the disaster and clarify the mystery surrounding the explosion.
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| Ukraine remembers victims of Chernobyl disaster |
The population will be evacuated 30 hours after the explosion, 30 firefighters will perish in the acute radiation syndrome rescue operation and many more men will be sacrificed to save thousands more.
Filmed in reality in Vilnius, Lithuania, with a budget of 250 million dollars, Chernobyl resumes accurately and realistically the chronology of events, trying to reflect the disaster as accurately as possible. The responsibility of scientists and authorities, the inaction and incompetence of the latter, taking advantage of the ignorance of the population.
Finally, to live with the weight of the guilt of thousands of aborted lives, the question arises: What is the price of lying?
