Chernobyl (HBO 2019)
HBO's 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck, explores the aftermath of the world's most devastating nuclear disaster. The series begins on April 26, 1986, the day when the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. The explosion emitted 400 times the radioactivity of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II, making the region around the plant uninhabitable for the next 20,000 years. The miniseries follows nuclear physicists Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), alongside Soviet Ministries Chairman Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) tasked with handling the disaster. Chernobyl is partly based on Svetlana Alexievich's book Voices from Chernobyl, which is comprised of the personal accounts of those affected by the meltdown.
Analysis
Throughout Chernobyl, there is an emphasis on the tension between those who are informed and those who are uninformed. In the aftermath of the meltdown, little information was disseminated about the disaster and its potential health risks. Hours after the explosion the board of the nuclear plant deliberated whether to evacuate. A proponent of the board says, “Our faith in Soviet Socialism will always be rewarded [...] But it is my experience that when the people ask questions that are not in their own best interest, they should simply be told to keep their minds on their labor and leave matters of the state to the state” (S1EP1 41:51). This demonstrates a corruption of Marxist beliefs meant to privilege and honor laborers, twisted to instead limit the laborer’s access to knowledge and truth, therefore limiting the power of the people through bourgeois deception.
The repercussions of their actions are demonstrated in the following scene, as firefighters attempt to extinguish the fire within the reactor, exposing themselves to lethal amounts of radiation. One firefighter picks up a piece of graphite only for it to burn through his skin a few minutes later. The lives of first responders are put in jeopardy due to the lack of information given to them regarding the severity of the meltdown. This wasn’t an ordinary fire; the board knew there was some level of radiation present and failed to warn the firefighters. The gravity of the disaster is withheld by officials, even after the death of twenty-eight firefighters.
The lack of clarity surrounding the explosion forced civilians to weigh the dangers of the disaster against their instincts. This is exemplified through Lyudmilla Ignatenko (Jessie Buckley) who was pregnant in 1986 when her husband served as a firefighter at the explosion where he suffered fatal radiation burns. Ignatenko decides to stay with her husband until his passing, inadvertently exposing herself to radiation, causing her child to die hours after birth. Ignatenko’s decision to stay with her husband is uninformed, yet understandable as she chooses family over an unseen danger that nobody quite understands. This speaks to a larger idea regarding nuclear power. How do people mourn and retain humanity in the face of something as incomprehensible as nuclear power and radiation, especially when institutions refuse to provide the necessary information?
Not all misinformation is intentional, some is due to fundamental misunderstandings of radiation’s effects, such as how it changes the natural world. Episode two is a useful example of character development between Shcherbina and Legasov. Shcherbina notes that “the radiation isn’t high enough to evacuate [...] we’re staying here,” to which Legasov responds “Yes, we are, and we’ll be dead in five years” (S1EP2 39:22). This scene is followed by a moment of silence as Shcherbina processes the grave realization that being in Chornobyl has significantly shortened his lifespan. This exchange reveals that the protagonists’ greatest enemy is time: death is inevitable and indiscriminate in Chornobyl. Shcherbina, despite all his power and influence as a politician, is unaware of the gravity of radiation poisoning, illustrating how prevalent misinformed decisions—or a lack of information—has become.
The series ends with a harrowing testimony from Legasov where he explains the real cause of the reactor explosion, only for the truth to be withheld from the public. In many ways, the series uses the audience's ignorance surrounding the disaster to not only build suspense but to reveal the true cost of lacking essential information: the destruction of an entire city, and the damnation of its possible futures.
Bibliography
Mazin, Craig. Chernobyl, HBO Home Video, 2019.
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