Watching Chernobyl
Note: This review is full of spoilers, although a lot more happens than I mention here.
I barely remember Chernobyl. It happened when I was 26 years old, just back from India. The full extent of the disaster was unknown outside the Soviet Union in those days. All the western public knew was based upon distant radiation readings in (then) West Germany and in Sweden and US satellite photographs. Information was not so easily accessed or disseminated as it is today. We had to mail letters to our friends far away. They took days to get there. Long-distance telephone calling was expensive.
Since then quite a bit has been uncovered by the world about the nuclear plant explosion at Chernobyl. These past decades, I haven’t really been paying attention to new nuclear facts about events at the end of the Cold War. So, for example, while I knew they had to construct a containment structure to secure the reactor, I never really learned the wider story of the debacle – and how close it came to becoming a global catastrophe.
HBO’s Chernobyl is a dramatization of this historic event. It is not without its flaws in its depiction of history. For example, in the TV show a helicopter hovers briefly over the smoldering reactor and crashes from the intense radiation. In reality, there was a chopper crash but it had nothing directly to do with the reactor. So, there are some dramatic liberties taken. But the series is nevertheless true to the general reality of the situation in 1986, with striking effect. It is well-written, extremely well-acted with three very fine performances supported by a effective cast, it is authentic to the rather dispiriting culture of the now-failed Soviet state, and it does not overly sensationalize the general events of that time.
The three great performances are delivered by Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard, and Jared Harris. Watson depicts Ulana Khomyuk, a fictionalized representation of the dozens of nuclear physicists and other scientists within the Soviet Union who raced against time to solve the complex problems presented by the explosion. She is brilliant, gritty, unflinching, determined, yet measured. Watson delivers Khomyuk as an equal to anyone she encounters, and superior to many. Watson's acting provides the foundation upon which the other performances are grounded. She is the first scientist outside of Chernobyl to discover the radiation leak and to deduce it came from an exploding reactor some 500 kilometers away.
Skarsgard plays a real figure, Boris Shcherbina, a mid-level Communist Party official. I have admired Skarsgard in previous performances. He is very competent and here gives us a level-headed, no-nonsense bureaucrat with a sharp, dry sense of humor. He is appointed by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (in a solid, if brief, performance by David Dencik) to visit the damaged reactor at Chernobyl and report back to the specially formed committee. The more he learns, the deeper he is immersed by the undeniable magnitude of the tragedy, the more bedraggled he becomes. Until his body seems to be almost just hanging there in space, while his face droops, weighted down by what his responsibilities. First, nuclear contamination to more than 50 million people must be prevented, then he has to clean-up the unparalleled mess. He ultimately calls the shots and orders everything needed for the massive operation that unfolds throughout the minseries.
He is ordering all of this equipment, men and materials at the request of Valery Legasov, Deputy Director of the country’s foremost nuclear research center in Moscow, portrayed extraordinarily by Jared Harris. This nuclear physicist is being challenged by something that has never happened on the face of the earth before, a nuclear power plant meltdown following an explosion of its core, something every Soviet physicist agrees is impossible with this particular type of reactor.
Those plant workers who survived the explosion, along with many firemen who were initially sent to extinguish the enormous radioactive fire, are quickly airlifted to Moscow’s best hospital for treatment from radiation burns. Watson goes there to interview the plant operators “while they are still alive” in order collect data in an attempt to ascertain what could have possibly caused the explosion. Meanwhile, Skarsgard and Harris, having finally contained the radiation fire (which belched radioactivity into the air for weeks, contaminating all animal and plant life, including the soil, not to mention thousands of humans), must next contend with a core meltdown that will eat through the protective pad under the reactor in about 4 weeks.
Harris plays an expert, highly knowledgeable scientist. Although he doesn't understand how the reactor could have exploded, he knows the consequences of the subsequent decisions he makes. He knows that to put out the reactor fire will require transforming it into a chaotic threat to the ground water table should it burn through that pad. He determines that if miners can burrow under the reactor pad then a massive heat exchanger can be installed that will stop the meltdown. In the meantime, he is dealing the fact that he is a dead man. He already knows that the amount of constant radiation in the atmosphere he is working in will kill him a few years time.
Jared Harris is my new favorite living actor. He played the lead masterfully in last year’s The Terror. As Legasov, he is a great improviser, constantly frustrated with the Soviet state’s slowness to grasp the significance of the problem as well as his own inability to explain it to the non-scientific Party bureaucrats that are essential to make urgent and necessary things happen. Harris deftly conveys a character dealing with the complex demands of the radioactive cataclysm while wrestling with internal disturbance of his mortality and his utter helplessness but for the aid that Boris can provide at his request.
Harris teams up with Watson after her return from Moscow and ultimately determines what caused the explosion. To oversimplify it, the relatively inexpensive use of graphite tips on the nuclear reactor rods could create a momentary burst of energy if they were reinserted under the unusual conditions created largely through human error at Chernobyl. It was when the graphite hit the over-reactive core that the explosion occurred.
To inform the audience of the technical complexity, Chernobyl uses the trial of the three men held accountable for the disaster which occurs in the final episode to fully explain the conditions that made the explosion possible. Similarly, the series uses the special committee meetings in the beginning and middle episodes as a platform where Harris can explain the complex and incomparable situation to the state officials (and hence to the audience).
The series does a terrific job of capturing the rather muted and drab living conditions in the Soviet Union with paint peeling off all the walls and everything looking a bit grimy. The instrumental details of the nuclear reactor control room are faithfully reproduced, as are the more mundane aspects of life such as mannerisms, clothing, furnishings, antiquated telephone systems, and widespread cigarette smoking to create an authenticity within which the drama powerfully plays out.
To help humanize the narrative, there is a side-story of one of the first responders (played by Adam Nagaitis, who was also excellent in The Terror). His heroic but futile attempt to put out a fire he did not know can’t be extinguished with mere water exposes him to the radioactive core. Then he is airlifted to Moscow for treatment. His pregnant wife (superbly portrayed by Jessie Buckley), proceeds to fight through the security and bureaucracy to find him. Only to witness the horrific transformation of his burns over several days until, writhing in pain, he dies and is buried with the other immediate victims, in lead coffins covered with cement.
Chernobyl is a dramatization, not a documentary. Despite its flaws and liberties with the actual course of events, it does not stray far from the general facts. It creates spectacular, often heart-pounding, tension out of some fairly esoteric circumstances. The workings of reactors and radiation make for mysterious enemies. A reactor exploded when it shouldn’t have. It rained radiation down on an area that eventually required 750,000 people to clean-up. It almost contaminated a key river system in the Ukraine, along with all the land, forests, animals, towns and cities bordering the rivers. But that was stopped. Barely. Between 4,000 and 93,000 people died as a result of all that radiation exposure. Official Soviet propaganda admitted to a mere 31 deaths.
I was captivated by the fantastic intimate bleakness of this series. Even though only about one million of us watched it in the US (with almost as many British viewers too), Chernobyl is a bona fide hit with both its viewers and the critics. It captures a certain aspect of our zeitgeist. It presently enjoys the highest IMDB rating of any film or television series in history, passing such admired series as Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad and such films as The Godfather. Jared Harris’ performance is magnificent and is already garnering a lot of Emmy buzz. Rarely has so much dark yet fascinating and compelling entertainment been packed into a mere five episodes. I'm not sure the series is truly better than the aforementioned programs/films but it is certainly the best thing on television I've seen this year.
I barely remember Chernobyl. It happened when I was 26 years old, just back from India. The full extent of the disaster was unknown outside the Soviet Union in those days. All the western public knew was based upon distant radiation readings in (then) West Germany and in Sweden and US satellite photographs. Information was not so easily accessed or disseminated as it is today. We had to mail letters to our friends far away. They took days to get there. Long-distance telephone calling was expensive.
Since then quite a bit has been uncovered by the world about the nuclear plant explosion at Chernobyl. These past decades, I haven’t really been paying attention to new nuclear facts about events at the end of the Cold War. So, for example, while I knew they had to construct a containment structure to secure the reactor, I never really learned the wider story of the debacle – and how close it came to becoming a global catastrophe.
HBO’s Chernobyl is a dramatization of this historic event. It is not without its flaws in its depiction of history. For example, in the TV show a helicopter hovers briefly over the smoldering reactor and crashes from the intense radiation. In reality, there was a chopper crash but it had nothing directly to do with the reactor. So, there are some dramatic liberties taken. But the series is nevertheless true to the general reality of the situation in 1986, with striking effect. It is well-written, extremely well-acted with three very fine performances supported by a effective cast, it is authentic to the rather dispiriting culture of the now-failed Soviet state, and it does not overly sensationalize the general events of that time.
The three great performances are delivered by Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard, and Jared Harris. Watson depicts Ulana Khomyuk, a fictionalized representation of the dozens of nuclear physicists and other scientists within the Soviet Union who raced against time to solve the complex problems presented by the explosion. She is brilliant, gritty, unflinching, determined, yet measured. Watson delivers Khomyuk as an equal to anyone she encounters, and superior to many. Watson's acting provides the foundation upon which the other performances are grounded. She is the first scientist outside of Chernobyl to discover the radiation leak and to deduce it came from an exploding reactor some 500 kilometers away.
Skarsgard plays a real figure, Boris Shcherbina, a mid-level Communist Party official. I have admired Skarsgard in previous performances. He is very competent and here gives us a level-headed, no-nonsense bureaucrat with a sharp, dry sense of humor. He is appointed by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (in a solid, if brief, performance by David Dencik) to visit the damaged reactor at Chernobyl and report back to the specially formed committee. The more he learns, the deeper he is immersed by the undeniable magnitude of the tragedy, the more bedraggled he becomes. Until his body seems to be almost just hanging there in space, while his face droops, weighted down by what his responsibilities. First, nuclear contamination to more than 50 million people must be prevented, then he has to clean-up the unparalleled mess. He ultimately calls the shots and orders everything needed for the massive operation that unfolds throughout the minseries.
He is ordering all of this equipment, men and materials at the request of Valery Legasov, Deputy Director of the country’s foremost nuclear research center in Moscow, portrayed extraordinarily by Jared Harris. This nuclear physicist is being challenged by something that has never happened on the face of the earth before, a nuclear power plant meltdown following an explosion of its core, something every Soviet physicist agrees is impossible with this particular type of reactor.
Those plant workers who survived the explosion, along with many firemen who were initially sent to extinguish the enormous radioactive fire, are quickly airlifted to Moscow’s best hospital for treatment from radiation burns. Watson goes there to interview the plant operators “while they are still alive” in order collect data in an attempt to ascertain what could have possibly caused the explosion. Meanwhile, Skarsgard and Harris, having finally contained the radiation fire (which belched radioactivity into the air for weeks, contaminating all animal and plant life, including the soil, not to mention thousands of humans), must next contend with a core meltdown that will eat through the protective pad under the reactor in about 4 weeks.
Harris plays an expert, highly knowledgeable scientist. Although he doesn't understand how the reactor could have exploded, he knows the consequences of the subsequent decisions he makes. He knows that to put out the reactor fire will require transforming it into a chaotic threat to the ground water table should it burn through that pad. He determines that if miners can burrow under the reactor pad then a massive heat exchanger can be installed that will stop the meltdown. In the meantime, he is dealing the fact that he is a dead man. He already knows that the amount of constant radiation in the atmosphere he is working in will kill him a few years time.
Jared Harris is my new favorite living actor. He played the lead masterfully in last year’s The Terror. As Legasov, he is a great improviser, constantly frustrated with the Soviet state’s slowness to grasp the significance of the problem as well as his own inability to explain it to the non-scientific Party bureaucrats that are essential to make urgent and necessary things happen. Harris deftly conveys a character dealing with the complex demands of the radioactive cataclysm while wrestling with internal disturbance of his mortality and his utter helplessness but for the aid that Boris can provide at his request.
Harris teams up with Watson after her return from Moscow and ultimately determines what caused the explosion. To oversimplify it, the relatively inexpensive use of graphite tips on the nuclear reactor rods could create a momentary burst of energy if they were reinserted under the unusual conditions created largely through human error at Chernobyl. It was when the graphite hit the over-reactive core that the explosion occurred.
To inform the audience of the technical complexity, Chernobyl uses the trial of the three men held accountable for the disaster which occurs in the final episode to fully explain the conditions that made the explosion possible. Similarly, the series uses the special committee meetings in the beginning and middle episodes as a platform where Harris can explain the complex and incomparable situation to the state officials (and hence to the audience).
The series does a terrific job of capturing the rather muted and drab living conditions in the Soviet Union with paint peeling off all the walls and everything looking a bit grimy. The instrumental details of the nuclear reactor control room are faithfully reproduced, as are the more mundane aspects of life such as mannerisms, clothing, furnishings, antiquated telephone systems, and widespread cigarette smoking to create an authenticity within which the drama powerfully plays out.
To help humanize the narrative, there is a side-story of one of the first responders (played by Adam Nagaitis, who was also excellent in The Terror). His heroic but futile attempt to put out a fire he did not know can’t be extinguished with mere water exposes him to the radioactive core. Then he is airlifted to Moscow for treatment. His pregnant wife (superbly portrayed by Jessie Buckley), proceeds to fight through the security and bureaucracy to find him. Only to witness the horrific transformation of his burns over several days until, writhing in pain, he dies and is buried with the other immediate victims, in lead coffins covered with cement.
Chernobyl is a dramatization, not a documentary. Despite its flaws and liberties with the actual course of events, it does not stray far from the general facts. It creates spectacular, often heart-pounding, tension out of some fairly esoteric circumstances. The workings of reactors and radiation make for mysterious enemies. A reactor exploded when it shouldn’t have. It rained radiation down on an area that eventually required 750,000 people to clean-up. It almost contaminated a key river system in the Ukraine, along with all the land, forests, animals, towns and cities bordering the rivers. But that was stopped. Barely. Between 4,000 and 93,000 people died as a result of all that radiation exposure. Official Soviet propaganda admitted to a mere 31 deaths.
I was captivated by the fantastic intimate bleakness of this series. Even though only about one million of us watched it in the US (with almost as many British viewers too), Chernobyl is a bona fide hit with both its viewers and the critics. It captures a certain aspect of our zeitgeist. It presently enjoys the highest IMDB rating of any film or television series in history, passing such admired series as Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad and such films as The Godfather. Jared Harris’ performance is magnificent and is already garnering a lot of Emmy buzz. Rarely has so much dark yet fascinating and compelling entertainment been packed into a mere five episodes. I'm not sure the series is truly better than the aforementioned programs/films but it is certainly the best thing on television I've seen this year.
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