Details of the explosion

The series of the American producer and Swedish clipmaker "Chernobyl" turned out to be an honest and even patriotic statement towards Russia: publicist Yury Saprykin summarizes the preliminary results

Product with a quality mark

The viewer, who in foreign cinema about Russia is looking primarily for cranberries and inconsistencies, the series "Chernobyl" may even disappoint: in the first two episodes, only the form of appeals to the interlocutor ("What do you say, director Bryukhanov?") and the figure of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev are unpleasantly offended (more on that below). The object world of the late USSR is recreated here with a thoroughness that the decorators of the late Soviet Mosfilm would envy: panel houses, buses of the Lviv Automobile Plant, suits and dresses, sports pennants on the walls, slippers and a trash can - the pathological accuracy of details seems even excessive for an American cable channel , but instantly catapults the viewer, even passing through Soviet times, to a country that does not exist.

It is somewhat premature to check “Chernobyl” for compliance with historical events following the results of the second series, especially since the authors deliberately allow themselves a share of fiction - for example, one of the main parts in the unfolding drama is played by a female physicist from Minsk, Ulyana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), who never existed in real. Nevertheless, the chronology and factography are precisely maintained, the course of events in the first hours after the explosion is reconstructed with almost documentary accuracy, some storylines are taken from Svetlana Aleksievich’s book “Chernobyl Prayer”, compiled from the memoirs of witnesses of the disaster, even the most amazing scenes are the inhabitants of Pripyat, those who gathered on the bridge to look at the bluish glow over the station, or the helicopter, falling sideways over the burning power unit, are also mentioned in the memoirs.

In terms of respect for facts and details, Chernobyl is a product with the highest quality mark, made to last, you won’t undermine

It is already clear that in subsequent episodes, relatively speaking, General Boris Gogol will not send worker Grubozabaischikov to repair the reactor using a sledgehammer with a red star; in terms of respect for facts and details, "Chernobyl" is a product with a mark of the highest quality, done in good conscience, you can't undermine.

Corridors lined with marble, rooms with polished furniture, metal dashboards of a unique dirty yellow color - all this seems to be sprinkled with gray sand here: already at the picture level, this creates both a nostalgic distance and a sense of invisible threat - and betrays the hand of the director, the Swedish music video director Johan Renk, the author of David Bowie's death clips, passed through the same color filters. For the authors of the series, the uncomfortable panel greyness is not a sign of poverty and not evidence of the inhumanity of the country, but rather a curious texture: Chernobyl follows a recent European tradition here - from books by architectural critic Owen Hatherley to videos of fashionable artists filmed in the sleeping areas of Kiev or Vilnius, - in which brutalist socialist architecture becomes an object of aesthetic admiration and an occasion for reflection on the lost social experience.

Visible and invisible evil

The authors are interested in buildings, furniture and clothing, but even more interesting are the people: the nervously fidgeting bosses who are afraid that something might happen - and the harsh workers and firefighters who do not hesitate to go to their deaths. As series creator Craig Masin said on an HBO podcast, “The Soviet Union was the only country where Chernobyl could have happened — and the only country that could have repaired such an accident” (as for the Swedish director, Chernobyl is Messin’s first major work: until recently, his main achievement in the cinema was the scripts for the films "Bachelor Party-2" and "Bachelor Party-3").

One can argue with the first statement: the accident could have happened anywhere, and the story told here is in some ways quite universal. In part, "Chernobyl" resembles a traditional horror film - with the adjustment that this plot was not invented by any Stephen King.

Unseen and invisible evil breaks free; throughout the first series, we observe how the characters cannot put what happened in their heads, compare it with their own experience. They instinctively try to find a simple and reassuring explanation for what happened - for example, the shift supervisor Dyatlov demands, following the instructions, to fill the reactor core with water, even when eyewitnesses burned by a nuclear tan return from the scene, reporting that there is no more reactor.

Long before the era of fake news, the Soviet bureaucracy creates a pipeline of half-truths and omissions that continues to run smoothly even when those omissions become deadly.

This is how the heroes of any horror behave, and not a single country was insured against the realization of such a scenario in reality. Soviet specificity begins at the next stage - when the instinctive search for reassuring versions turns into a deliberate lie. It is terrible to report what has happened to the authorities, and even more terrible to people: it is impossible to sow panic, and it is absolutely impossible to allow information to leak out to our ideological enemies. This system is vulnerable not so much technologically as morally: it reacts to every emergency situation primarily by hiding its head in the sand, it is afraid to take responsibility, and it is absolutely impossible for a superpower to be hurt by “what they say in the West.” Long before the advent of the “fake news” era, the Soviet bureaucracy creates a pipeline of half-truths and omissions, which continues to run smoothly, even when these omissions become deadly: the caste of Soviet officials did have a chance, due to cowardice and incompetence, to cover half of Europe with radioactive ash - but fixing this fact, Chernobyl is moving on.

The feeling of the helplessness of an ordinary person in the face of an unthinkable catastrophe (which is superimposed on the mutual responsibility of bureaucratic lies) is the background that we already know from Alexander Mindadze’s film “On Saturday”, without a doubt, the best that was filmed in Russia about Chernobyl (however, competitors in this competition he has a little). But the current series, if you need to find a Soviet analogue, is closer to the disaster films of the early 80s, where the heroes who got into the center of events faced a difficult moral choice, under the burden of existential responsibility.

If we continue the comparisons with the filmography of Mindadze, then this is more likely filmed according to his script "The Train Stopped". The world of "Chernobyl" is not limited to bureaucratic offices - cowardly party secretaries are opposed here by experts, first of all, Academician Legasov, who is not afraid to admit both the scale of what happened and the severity of future trials. Mikhail Gorbachev stands out from the line of impenetrable party leaders: he is resolute and concise, and, probably, more like the way he is used to seeing in the West than the Gorbachev we remember him.

The Soviet Union in Chernobyl consists not only of polished furniture and bas-reliefs with Lenin, it is not just a country of mediocre officials - it is the birthplace of heroes who sacrifice themselves to save the world

By the end of the second series, it turns out that a reactor explosion can lead to a catastrophe of unheard of proportions, in order to prevent it, someone needs to sacrifice themselves, and the people working in Chernobyl are just the ones who are able to do this: they were brought up in a culture in which such a sacrifice - in the name of something common and higher, "for the sake of life on earth" - was affirmed as the highest value. This almost ancient heroism from the point of view of humanistic modernity looks reckless and almost inhuman - but in Chernobyl it turns out to be absolutely necessary, and party functionary Boris Shcherbina, speaking to the workers of the station, who suddenly switches from the language of a Soviet boss to the rhetoric of an almost Roman commander, appeals precisely to this feeling.

The Soviet Union in Chernobyl consists not only of polished furniture and bas-reliefs with Lenin, it is not just a country of mediocre officials - it is the birthplace of heroes who sacrifice themselves to save the world.

And despite the years and millions spent by the current Russian authorities on cultivating a new patriotic cinema, one cannot find in it such an honest and convincing patriotic statement as what the little-known Swedish clip maker and American producer did in Chernobyl.