Chernobyl: Unforgettably Haunting

Coming off my first relationship breakup, I was feeling really down. People had always said breaking up was hard, but I think they undersold it to me. That stuff hurts. Really badly. However, one weird thing about breakups and the days and weeks following them is that your memory tends to latch on to the strangest and most seemingly arbitrary things. And so, my first breakup will always be remembered as the breakup where I played Skyrim with my super awesome roommate, ate copious amounts of Taco Bell, and watched HBO's Chernobyl for the first time. I was late to the game and hadn't watched the show when it first premiered in 2019, even amidst all the hype surrounding it, but hey, better late than never. And let me tell you, I will never ever forget what I watched. Chernobyl is nothing short of a triumph of storytelling. I'm not usually the guy who gets invested in TV shows, even if they're presented in the miniseries format. I like movies and their close-ended storytelling conventions. However, I could not get enough of this series. It's an appropriately dark, undeniably intimate, and narratively airtight account of the infamous and, tragically, completely avoidable Chernobyl, Ukraine, nuclear power plant disaster of 1986, and so it already checked a lot of boxes for me in terms of my interests. Character-centrism? Check. History? Check. Atmosphere? Check. However, despite the show being seemingly tailor-made to account for interests I've held at different points in my life, it also helps that the series is just undeniably, objectively, and extremely well-written, well-acted, and well-balanced, and its storytelling methods combined with its unmistakably serious tone prevent it from ever feeling exploitative. It didn't become popular for no reason.

One of my favorite things about the show has to be it's commitment to keeping the people involved in the disaster at the forefront of the narrative. Chernobyl is far less interested in what happened to the power plant (although those details are indeed very fascinating) and far more interested in how what happened to the power plant affected those in the surrounding areas, among them everyone from politicians to ordinary firefighters, and even citizens who's stories are completely inconsequential to the history of what happened, but simultaneously far more intriguing than the scientific side of the story. A truly remarkable example of this human-centeredness is a scene on a bridge where a bunch of anonymous or near-anonymous Soviet citizens from the city of Pripyat watch the power plant disaster from a distance, unaware that dangerous radioactive particles are floating in the air around them. However, we, as the viewers, know what is going on even though the show doesn't explicitly state it. It's one of the most powerful moments in a series that is chock-full of powerful moments. The show didn't need to include this sequence to push the overarching narrative of the show forward, but it is reported that every person known to be present on the bridge died soon after or in the years following the disaster due to radiation poisoning, and regardless of the accuracy of these reports (this is the Soviet Union we're talking about), every scene like this just adds to the believability and tone of what is ultimately a reenactment of a very real and tragic chapter of history.

Chernobyl is not a long miniseries. It consists of only five hour-or-so-long episodes, and I have to commend the writers of this show for not trying to do more than they needed to. The pacing in this show is excellent, and even more impressive than the pacing is how well the show balances storylines about different people caught up in this horrific disaster. By the time the show came to an end, I really felt like I understood and had traveled with the people who had actually lived through this disaster, even if some of the characters were merely based upon people who had lived in Ukraine at the time, ie, Pavel. Out of every character in the show, the one that stuck with me the most was Valery Legasov. Portrayed by Jared Harris, this man was nothing short of hauntingly tragic and ultimately became the arbiter for the bigger ideas of the show, most notably the cost of suppressing the truth in the name of the greater good. In his own words, "Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid." What a poignant and applicable line that people all throughout history have loved to ignore. After all, a comfortable lie is far easier to cling to than an inconvenient or tragic truth. One of my favorite narrative choices in the show has to be its choice to portray Legasov's very true-to-life suicide at the beginning of the first episode. While this may seem like a self-destructive narrative choice for obvious reasons, this technique was used very effectively to demonstrate one thing: if the "main character" of the show (am I allowed to use that term for films and shows portraying real events?) is committing suicide, that can only mean that what follows would be nothing short of horrific. And horrific it was. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that Chernobyl doesn't waste time. It's very tightly written and effectively paced, and it knows what kind of story it wants to write. Not a moment in the show ever felt like it wasn't necessary or somehow working towards the conclusion of the show and/or demonstrating the bigger ideas of the narrative, which it portrayed through showing us, the viewer, the horrifying truth rather than just dropping it on us in big doses of clunky and lazy exposition. Chernobyl isn't just an effective show. It's a smart one, too.

Lastly, the atmosphere of this show is spectacular. The budget for this miniseries was around $40 million, or $8 million per episode, which isn't a ton, but the creators made every penny count. For comparison, another HBO series, their The Last of Us adaptation, cost around $10 million per episode, and I would argue, despite the incredible sets present in the show, that The Last of Us doesn't quite match Chernobyl when it comes to capturing atmosphere. Still, $8 million per episode is a lot of money, and it was put to very effective use. Not once was my sense of illusion broken while I was watching Chernobyl. The grim and grounded atmosphere of the show was perfectly captured by cinematographer Jakob Ihre and an obviously-skilled team of production designers and location scouts, In short, this show looks incredible in general, and not merely incredible for having a budget of $8 million for each episode. I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. Chernobyl is a grim show. Beyond grim. "Haunting" is a better description. It'll stick with you forever, and the atmosphere of this show, courtesy of the cinematography and production design, is what really puts the final touch on what is, perhaps, pound-for-pound, the best show I've ever seen. And all of it is supplemented by an incredibly atmospheric score, most notably an original recording of Vichnaya Pamyat, an old Ukrainian hymn that translates roughly to "memory eternal."

For some of my footnotes, I need to state that Chernobyl is not for the faint of heart. It's an incredibly grim, dark, mature, and horrifying show and should be approached with discernment when it comes to kids or teenagers who might be interested in this particular offering from HBO. So please, take my hearty endorsement with a grain of salt in the category of appropriateness for younger audiences. But that said, I wholeheartedly recommend this show to anyone daring enough to look this tragedy in the eye, whereas the veil of the past might deflect or dilute the glance of those looking at it from a purely historical point of view. It's a beautiful and brutal window into what happens when the pride of man is put before the truth. The truth always has its say in the end, and the longer we suppress it or ignore it, the louder it tends to say what it wants when it finally does come to light. The cost of ignoring a tough truth can be a high one and in the case of Chernobyl, the cost sits somewhere around 20,000 years. That's how long it will be before the areas surrounding Chernobyl, most notably Pripyat, will be inhabitable again. The show somehow manages to portray the undeniable graveness of the history surrounding the disaster and do so in an undeniably respectful way that honors the victims of the disaster rather than exploiting, degrading, or sensationalizing them or their stories. Chernobyl is storytelling at its very, very finest.

Chernobyl - 10/10

Proverbs 12:19