Review of Chernobyl

Chernobyl (2019)
7/10
Not a single house will stand for long without a strong foundation.
9 June 2019
The events in Chernobyl showed in practice how terrible the consequences of the negligence of a person giving orders could be. Undoubtedly the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant occurred through the fault of selfish people. Without even realizing it, they doomed thousands of people to death and disease. But who were these people?

This series deserves compliments for its attitude to details, high-quality shooting and the play of actors. Is this the TV show of the year? Unfortunately, I can not call him that. Not for nothing I drew an analogy with the foundation of the house in the table of contents. This series has a foundation, but the foundation was designed by a very inexperienced engineer. This engineer looked from afar at the foundation he wanted to repeat when building his house and tried very hard to do everything right, but unfortunately he could not.

"What is the price of a lie?", This series asks us a question. On the subject of this question, you can argue for a long time and find real stories or invent them to interpret the basic meaning of the question. However, the authors chose a catastrophe in Chernobyl and this was the most fatal mistake in the "design of the foundation", because of which it was covered with cracks.

The fact is that all the main message of the series is based on the moments invented by the writers. The characters are built on these moments, the whole drama is built on these moments. This is a very big mistake.

"Chernobyl" was supposed to be a show exclusively about the negligence of the manager, at that time, the reactor staff and the courage of all those who saved the whole continent, but not about lies and struggle against the state.

The very "artistic conventions" turned the brave people who saved the world into intimidated bastards, who have to choose: to save the whole world or not to get a bullet from their own state. "The artistic conventions" are so huge that in order to see them you will need to "step back ":

1. Legasov was not the "central" character of those events, he was only a link in a huge chain. He did not beg the government to evacuate, he didn't work alone (Homyuk doesn't count: the real prototypes that included in she are not the three people who worked in team with Legasov), he didn't make everyone "move" and moreover he didn't persuade everyone that it is dangerous. The KGB never "pressed" on him (source: decryption of Legasov's tapes. It also indirectly proves that he did not hide the tapes, and his memoirs "went" to all the institutes after his report in Vienna). There are several theories why Legasov committed suicide: 1 - fear of radiation sickness; 2 - harassment among colleagues who envied Legasov's success after his report in Vienna. Dyatlov did not see pieces of graphite on the ground, and after the accident he walked around the unit two times, but did not understand what had happened. Dyatlov left the station by ambulance, it tells that all the time he was at the station.

2. People in high positions did not sit on their hands: immediately after a few hours after the accident, teams were formed for possible elimination of consequences and evacuation of people and they were formed simultaneously with the formation of the "Legasov team". The high ranks immediately knew about the danger and no scientist persuaded them. None of the higher ranks had the right to face the death penalty, especially Shcherbina, who served as deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and had no relation to the judicial system, and for the behavior shown in the series, could lose his post.

3. Immediately after the disaster, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant sent a signal "1, 2, 3, 4", which indicated that the station had all the possible dangers, including radiation, that is, people understood what they were going. The day after the accident, all the TV channels of the USSR were told about the catastrophe. During the liquidation, documentaries were filmed and shown to the population of the USSR on television. Where is the "big lie" that is said in the series?

How now, knowing how everything was in reality, do you see the characters of the series? The above facts have an "absolute" influence on how events would unfold, so their distortion leads to a distortion of the whole event and its perception. These are the facts that were not worth distorting. These are the very distortions due to which the writers were able to move that event to the plane they need - the plane of lies, when in reality there was no talk of that.

What did it lead to? Now everyone will believe that the higher ranks were just sitting out their pants and intimidating everyone with execution while people were dying from radiation, when in reality they were the first to start thinking about solving the problem. Now everyone will think that people were not told about the danger, although in fact they were told almost immediately. Now everyone will believe that people were silenced and forbidden to talk about danger, when in fact the accident was made public in the country almost immediately.

Therefore, I call the screenwriters "inexperienced engineers": they turned the meaning of those events, that life lesson upside down. This was done in order to get into the main message of the film: "The Price of Lie", but it turns out to have unexpected consequences. Just like that cherished button AZ-5.

Comrade scriptwriters, what is the price of a lie?
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