Opinion: The lies that created 'Chernobyl'
4 min read . Updated: 14 Jun 2019, 11:35 AM IST- The need to have a leading man weighs on the HBO miniseries
- Jared Harris, Jessie Buckley and Stellan Skarsgård give striking performances
The highest distinction awarded in the USSR had a wonderful name, worthy of sashes and comic books: Hero Of The Soviet Union. Leonid Brezhnev and Georgy Zhukov won this four times apiece, and Indian astronaut Rakesh Sharma got this accolade as well. It’s an inspirational honorific, but—at least in translation—sounds a bit hollow.
The need to have a leading man who fits that title weighs on the haunting Chernobyl. A five-episode HBO miniseries (streaming in India on Hotstar Premium), this masterfully detailed tragedy paints history in broad strokes, pointing to evil-doers and creating do-gooders. It vividly recreates time and place, but conjures up heroes for the erstwhile Soviet Union, for a story that deserves none.
It is a pretty good show, though the hyperbole is deafening. This is a straightforward retelling, sometimes nightmarish and sometimes obvious in its grasps at the profound. Chernobyl is a disaster movie in slow motion. That approach allows us to focus on details we would miss in a rush, and offers a lot to unpack. Yet solemnness must not be mistaken for quality—that, ironically enough, sounds like a rather Soviet mistake.
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku once said, “All of us have a piece of Chernobyl in our bodies, going back to 1986." The nuclear butterfly effect is finely explored in this series by Craig Mazin. The horror of Chernobyl is on a scale too awful to comprehend, and those inside the Soviet Union only suspect the extent of the damage when the outside feels scared. “They are not letting children play outside in Frankfurt," a character reveals.
This gruesome show makes the possibility of the world ending seem commonplace: not with a bang, but a whimper that goes on so long we get used to it. We may not burst into flames—at least not all at once—but that doesn’t mean the world isn’t doomed. The idea of negligence and cost-cutting costing us a continent is too sobering, and, given our governments, all too plausible.
It starts out a bit Dr Strangelove. High-ranking officials are woken up in the middle of the night, and vengefully demand others also be roused: “Of course I want you to call him. If I’m up, he’s up." There is little to laugh at: Chernobyl is about people giving and following orders, and a dissection of the reasoning behind these orders. The show explains the working of a nuclear reactor with such clarity that it makes a strong case for HBO to replace physics schoolteachers (not history teachers, though. More on that in a bit).
There is some stunning imagery: a bird falling from the sky, hair falling on a blueprint, concrete being poured on to coffins, divers submerged in the radioactive heart of darkness (and, in a directorial masterstroke, going from that darkness brilliantly into the black end credits). The narrative is grimly predictable, with repetitive scenes of camaraderie and commiseration, but the treatment stays dry. Thrills would have been a betrayal. This tale of mistrust and governmental obfuscation takes it slow, providing enough lines to read between. Other times, old women about to get shot helpfully narrate Russia’s military history.
In the final episode, named The Trial in an unmissable Kafka reference, a scientist brings out teaching aids during his deposition and, as he moves away from his rostrum, an armed soldier rushes to affix a microphone near his new position. This is a series about detail.
Or, at the very least, details we expect from an American show about the USSR. Most Russian journalists are impressed by Chernobyl’s period detailing, while outraged by several inaccuracies, one of which I found particularly sticky. “Soviet people in 1986 didn’t go calling each other ‘comrade’ except at Communist Party meetings," writes Leonid Bershidsky in The Moscow Times, and while that may be a throwaway line from a stinging piece, it marks the kind of change no storyteller needs to make. It is an affectation thrown in for an already biased audience. In Chernobyl, everyone calls everyone “comrade", often before downing vodka by the tumbler.
The performances are striking. Jared Harris and Jessie Buckley are super, and Stellan Skarsgård is incredible. His weary, all-too-aware stoicism is reminiscent of the great Soumitra Chatterjee. Actors speak in English (with mostly British accents), conceding only perfectly pronounced Russian names, and this works better than attempting Soviet accents. It’s a move out of Armando Iannucci’s sublime satire The Death Of Stalin, another film about a specific time under a specific dictator, holding fears for us today.
“Comedy is tragedy plus time," Alan Alda proclaimed in Crimes And Misdemeanors, possibly paraphrasing Mark Twain. The concept is fiendishly simple: Enough distance from a sad event allows one to find the humour therein. We are told every catastrophe is some day worth a laugh, and, if we aren’t amused, that’s because it’s too soon. We never gave Chernobyl time. Three years after the reactor went off, we were introduced to Homer Simpson, safety inspector at a nuclear power plant.
It’s time we looked up facts. Chernobyl makes a tragic martyr out of a suicidal scientist, and concocts a superheroine—a composite character made conveniently out of “all" the helpful scientists—to save the day, asking and investigating and knowing all. As revisionist histories go, she’s like the Quentin Tarantino heroine who set Adolf Hitler on fire, but nobody mistook the hyperstylized Inglourious Basterds for the real thing. Chernobyl, through gravitas and greyness, is fiction posing as fact.
This is a serious, hard watch, and its biggest triumph would be to make us read and question. At times like this and for shows like these, we must heed the old Russian proverb quoted by the head of the on-screen KGB: “Trust, but verify."
Stream of Stories is a column on what to watch online. Raja Sen is a film critic and the author of The Best Baker In The World (2017), a children’s adaptation of The Godfather.
He tweets at @rajasen
