Review of the series “Chernobyl”. Cranberries in sugar and with a loss of metal

Review of the series "Chernobyl". Cranberries in sugar and with a loss of metal

Chernobyl series from HBO. The Russian -speaking audience, accustomed to receiving only the selected “cranberries” from the Americans, could alert this phrase alone. Including the first episode, you are sadly waiting for the next bears on the street and people in earflaps that light up from a nuclear reactor … But a miracle is accomplished, and the very first shots amaze with the reliability with which the creators reproduced Soviet reality.

Oh, these shabby apartments, where many have probably grown! About these pots, carpets on the walls and nightsowers in a flower! Work with details is amazing, the atmosphere of inevitability in a good crushes and envelops the viewer, and the whole skepticism somehow disappears by itself. You are already ready to finally see a great and true picture of Chernobyl ..

Only now there is one problem: behind a beautiful, honed, verified to the smallest detail, something unsightly hides the facade.

Small tragedies

The series starts with a bitter speech of academician Valery Legasov about the "price of lies". Having recorded it on the recorder, he hides cassettes with his notes in ventilation and, carefully leaving the cat more food, hungs. To explain the reasons for this act, we are returned exactly two years and one minute earlier, and from the window of the apartment of the fireman Ignatenko we observe the same explosion. What has already led to him, they will also show us, but only in the fifth series, beautifully looping the story.

Like the book "Chernobyl prayer" Svetlana Aleksievich, who was inspired by screenwriter Craig Maine, the series is focused on the stories of individuals. The accident is covered from different points of view, but always through the prism of fate broken by it. We will see the destroyed station and from the inside, the eyes of the staff, and on the outside, while the firefighters will fight with radionuclide fire.

To some extent, Chernobyl is a collection of small terrible short stories. The nurse, who was sleeping peacefully in the hospital at night (she had a little work in Pripyat), is perplexedly watching a string of ambulance rushing from the station of carriages. Firefighter's wife sits at the bed of her husband, rotting alive from radiation illness. Green newbinite looks with empty eyes at the streets, where he just fired gullibly running towards the dogs. They are united by a common invisible enemy – radiation.

Somewhere very far from all this policy and scientists constantly wage their war, trying to eliminate radiation and get to the bottom of the causes of the accident. If ordinary people are more episodic characters (not counting the wife of the firefighter Ignatenko), then the heroes from the “Higher Echelons” will pass with us through the entire series. Academician Legasov, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers Shcherbina, Belarusian scientist Khomyuk – it is they who own the main parties in this terrible symphony. But, despite this, the "small tragedies" of the liquidators are remembered no less.

Boris Shcherbina performed by Stellan Skarsgard

Everything related to the technical and artistic parts, in the "Chernobyl" impeccable. Actors are laid out in full, and the work of less known is not inferior to the waging of Stellan Skarsgard, Emily Watson and Jared Harris. The make -up artists tried fame, reproducing the terrible consequences of radiation disease. Color correction and anxious embossed against the background completes the pressure picture. Instead of music – a rumble like distant echoes of sirens, insinuating electronic overflows and hysterical crackling of dosimeter.

From all the Chernobyl genres, the closest to the horror: to convey the horror of the monstrous force, which was much worse than the zombies or some aliens from the cosmos, the series was done with a bang. You're scared when the heroes look into the girdle of the blown up reactor. It is scary when they descend into the dark half -flooded tunnels of the fourth power unit. It is scary when the "biorobots" crawl out onto the roof littered with radioactive fragments. We are afraid of monsters, but we know that they do not exist. And Chernobyl – a nightmare in reality, which is easy to measure in beras and Curie – was, is and can repeat itself.

True, fear is sharply reduced if you understand that it is not possible to believe what is happening … not that it is impossible, but it is possible exclusively with an eye on. And if the audience’s acquaintance with the Chernobyl theme is not limited to reading the most popular ships, this is inevitable and happens.

The tragedy is larger

“Chernobyl” mixes the truth and lie so subtle, in such skillful proportions that it is very difficult to separate one from the other. Forget about small blunders like double -glazed windows in Soviet houses or buses of the wrong color – damn it with them. The demonization of power and the thickening of colors is much more important.

It would seem that Chernobyl is a win -win topic that, with the proper skill of the crew, will make the audience sob and see nightmares at night. But showing reality is not scary enough. Therefore, the Evil Cage followed by the selfless scientists, instead of investigating the causes of disaster, and evil politicians threaten to throw colleagues out of a helicopter. The accidents are to blame for the greedy tops that are chasing the standards, and the foul managers of the nuclear power plant are so vile that even Disney villains seem less unambiguous in comparison with them. Liquidators are sent to certain death in the name of the highest good, and if someone does not want to fulfill a dangerous duty, good soldiers with Kalash will tell you where to go.

Where is the truth and where is the lie?

Well, for example, the reactor test was postponed not at all because of the mysterious “order from above”, according to the scriptwriters, but because the block was banally awarded to another power plant. A shortage of electricity was formed, and a call from the Kyiv of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant ordered this to compensate for this until they were eliminated. Strapped lines in the briefing to the experiment – the truth: this is stated in the audio recordings of Legasov. Only now, no one hid in the ventilation of his cassett, and the beautiful words that begin and end with them, they are not at all in sight.

The complete unpreparedness of the station employees to the experiment is another lie. They were no better and no worse than others. In addition to the young Toptunov, an experienced Yuri Tregub was behind the reactor control panel, who for the sake of testing lingered for a night shift. They completely distorted the character of the deputy chief engineer Dyatlov, confusing the "stiffness" with "inadequacy". After the explosion, the staff of the station did not wander in a dismissal of the fourth block, dying in secluded corners, as shown in the series, and heroically eliminated (as he could) the consequences of the accident. When the poor thing Sitnikov was ordered to check the reactor, he not only voluntarily climbed the roof, but also bypassed the entire block – this was the only way to get reliable data.

Miners from Tula really dug a tunnel under the reactor. Only at first they brought miners from other regions, closer, and the Tulas arrived in Chernobyl voluntarily. Armed soldiers did not drive them. They did not rose to the minister, who in reality was not a yellow -handed youth, and did not work naked. And the bitter irony is that their titanic work, as well as the dose that they got in the process, turned out to be in vain – the concrete pillow under the Prive Casino reactor never melted.

“Roof cats” (those who removed the wreckage from the roof, in Chernobyl called that way; the concept of “biorobots” appeared later) did not rush around the site, like headless chicken. They set a clear task and conducted a detailed video instructive. There was a landfill where graphite and pipes scattered something like they lay on a real roof. Typically, the soldier was accompanied by a dosimeter who went out onto the roof first and left the last – just to help awkward recruits if they suddenly fell or stuck. When the work was just beginning, the dosimetrists personally showed that to remove first of all, in order to effectively clear the passage.

The wreckage could be taken with your hands – in confused mittens. To facilitate the work of the “cats”, the so -called “hydraulic meter” was erected on the roof: it knocked down small fragments from the roof with a powerful pressure of water and nailed radioactive dust.

Female names really gave the roof zones, they were only called them differently-“Masha”, “Lena” and “Natasha”. Why they made this mistake, it is easy to understand: among the sources of information, Craig Maine indicated the documentary "Chernobyl-3828" , where one "Masha" is mentioned. The rest of the names, apparently, was to look for laziness, so they came up with random. The liquidators did not solder the boxes of vodka – on the "alienation zone", on the contrary, the dry law reigned. If I wanted to drink, got moonshine or diluted alcohol, which was given out for disinfection of tools.

In the "Chernobyl prayer", from where Lyudmila Ignatenko got the line, there are many touching and making -making scenes with a dying firefighter and his devoted wife. There is only one thing – how Lyudmila paints the husband of the beauty of Moscow instead of the Stone Court outside the hospital window. From the chamber, she saw fireworks in honor of Victory Day and a beautiful view of the capital. The whole danger of staying next to her husband Lyudmila was repeatedly explained, and did the staff of the hospital, and not the brave non -existent Khomyuk.

And on the stage of the funeral, it also creates that the series has problems with the installation. Boots in the hands of Lyudmila without a scene, as they unsuccessfully tried to put on the swollen legs of the dead man, raise questions. Not to mention the fact that the firefighters were buried not in a common grave – and certainly not filled with concrete in front

Legasov at the trial did not cut the truth-uterus. For that matter, he was not there at all. He read his report in Vienna, causing the applause of Western colleagues and some discontent among compatriots – others believed that he had gone to excess, honestly telling about the scale of the catastrophe and measures to eliminate its elimination. He had no idea about the “end effect” of the rods, although he had complaints about the installation of reactors. But at the court, other people calmly spoke about the explosiveness of the reactor. The evil KGB must have considered them too small bipods to threaten everyone in narrow corridors (or was too busy with pulling out a page that could save the country from the next disaster).

No one is forgotten, but it would be better to forget

The list of inaccuracies can be continued for a long time. And no, the feature film is not required to correspond to reality. Only now all this gives the same sour cranberry smell, to which we are used to in very true ribbons like "Red Sparrow" or "Rooms 44".

Yes, there was a silence in Chernobyl. There was a lie, there were victims and, the most sad, victims in vain. But there was no all that lies and all the horrors that the creators made up for the sake of their plan. It would seem that show the world the truth, because it itself is disgusting and breaks on emotions; But as in the series, the scapegoats are made by the station staff, so the creators are lying on everything in a row on the “Blood Gabnya” and “Nightmares of the Building”, forgetting about the banal human non -vocalism and chapcakers.

In those days, many did not understand what was terrible radiation. Honest warnings about danger have not always heard and listened. Even having received the limiting dose and getting acquainted with radiation illness, other liquidators continued to work to protect others. Just because it was necessary.

The series is dedicated to the “memory of everyone who suffered and sacrificed themselves”, only this monument came out strange. Instead of the heroes who were on great sacrifices, with a rare (and only) exception we get people intimidated by the regime. Instead of commanders who, by all means, tried to minimize the losses – the message of people to slaughter. Remembering the general that he inspired the “roof cats” by a personal example, the liquidator Valery Starodumov says: “The orders did not act there, the only principle that was applied is“ do as I am ””. What was shown in the series is little like.

It is ironic that even to the credits, claiming absolute documentary, the creators missed a typical Chernobyl myth about the "Death Bridge". Some “truthful” allegations of the finale are not easy to check, but, according to eyewitnesses, the Pripyatsy watched an accident perhaps from their balconies, and tall trees grew around the bridge, which blocked the review. This does not cancel the fact that a huge dose of radiation fell on the bridge, which is why it is still “phonit”. However, the loud words about “none of those who observed from the bridge” in fact turn out to be the same false vanity of drama as a stone bag outside the window of a dying firefighter.

HBO has an atmospheric and truthful thriller about how terrible a nuclear disaster is in principle … and a very mediocre story about a particular cataclysm, its victims and heroes. This is an excellent work of amazing decorations, but they placed an almost complete set of Chernobyl horror stories and stereotypes about the USSR. There are creators, for what to respect, and one could tell them “thank you” if the viewing encouraged the audience to look for truthful materials on the topic, and not blindly believe the shown on the screen. But due to attention to the details of Chernobyl, it is very easy to earn the confidence of the viewer. And as you know, the most dangerous and convincing lie is a finely distorted truth.

Chernobyl in cinema and series. What to see after a hit from HBO?