Haunting HBO original thriller miniseries proves to be a freshly cataclysmic disaster
Author: Robert Skuch Published
Ever wonder what happens when a totalitarian government obsessed with reputation management, cost-cutting, and exploiting its own people has to face an unprecedented man-made disaster the likes of which humanity has never seen? you get Chernobyla real-life nuclear disaster in 1986, and a 2019 HBO miniseries on Max that was based on a perfect storm of incompetence and events that we hope will never be repeated in our lifetimes.
Starting with the suicide, somehow it only gets worse with every passing scene, Chernobyl This is a horrifyingly realistic account of what happened when the Soviet Union undermined its façade of prosperity and nationalism through negligence at every level of bureaucracy.
Starts with suicide and gets worse
Chernobyl The story begins two years and one day after the disaster and focuses on Valery Legasov (Jared Harris), deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute. After recording his findings into a tape recorder and setting aside food for his cat, he tied a rope around his neck and kicked the chair out from under him. For two years, he carried the burden of the truth, but when he tried to make public his findings about the nuclear meltdown, the truth was systematically erased.
After the bleakest opening imaginable, we are taken to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, shortly after the explosion. Working alongside Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), government officials, and surviving factory workers, there are two problems to solve: controlling the meltdown in real time and figuring out what exactly went wrong.
Under the close supervision of Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård), Valery is taught never to question the state and to be careful about communicating his findings to those in power, no matter how important they may be. Through our investigation, we learned that cost-cutting measures, inexperienced engineers and impossible training deadlines created a perfect storm of destruction that devastated entire communities and claimed far more lives than officially acknowledged. The official death toll announced by the Soviet government was 31. The true number may never be known.
People who tell the truth never need to remember what they say
As bleak as the events described in the book Chernobyl Yes, there is a strange beauty in its horror that deserves recognition. One of the more compelling clues is how miners and first responders put their lives at risk, first out of ignorance and then with greater determination as they learned what the danger was. More importantly, we see what happens when a government built on propaganda and control collapses under its own weight.
There is a line in Chernobyl Capture the entire series. After yet another failed attempt to put out the fire, the question became what went wrong (again). A review of communications shared with other donors found that the Soviets “gave them propaganda numbers” about how bad things actually were, meaning “this would never work.” If lying means saving face on a global scale, then the truth will never be part of the solution.
truth is life
As radiation-infected wildlife are rounded up and killed, and the full extent of the radiation effects assessed, Chernobyl What happens when lies are sold as truth, when evacuations are delayed for optical reasons, when citizens pay the price for their government’s pride?
Even the setting feels like a metaphor. Brutalist architecture, once a symbol of efficiency, is now buried under ashes and ruins. The only remaining efficiency lies in the state’s ability and willingness to conceal the damage rather than repair it.
This is a difficult watch for all the right reasons, Chernobyl It’s a terrifying look at one of the darkest chapters in modern history and a cautionary tale about what happens when humanity’s best interests are treated as an afterthought in the pursuit of power.
Chernobyl is an HBO original and can be watched on Max.
