{"id":269633,"date":"2021-06-08T23:16:08","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T20:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/on-the-particular-devastation-of-the-chernobyl-premiere\/"},"modified":"2021-06-08T23:16:08","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T20:16:08","slug":"on-the-particular-devastation-of-the-chernobyl-premiere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/on-the-particular-devastation-of-the-chernobyl-premiere\/","title":{"rendered":"#On the Particular Devastation of the &#8216;Chernobyl&#8217; Premiere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;<strong>#On the Particular Devastation of the &#8216;Chernobyl&#8217; Premiere<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\">\n                <\/aside>\n<p><!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 3.7.9--><em>This essay is part of our <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series<\/a>\u00a0Episodes, a column in which senior contributor\u00a0Valerie Ettenhofer digs into the singular chapters of television that make the medium great. This entry revisits the first episode (\u201c1:23:45\u201d) of HBO\u2019s limited series Chernobyl.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p>History is, more often than not, a horrorshow. Some chapters are so horrific that filmmakers revisit them again and again on screen, holding them to the light so that the world might see their darkest parts. Other chapters of history are shadowy: the sort of tragedies most people can only imagine in rough outline because the gory details are rarely made public. <strong>Craig Mazin<\/strong>\u2019s clear-eyed, monumental series <strong><em>Chernobyl<\/em> <\/strong>is a feat of both filmmaking and truth-telling, a historical work that fills in the blanks of a uniquely human disaster with every shade of horror imaginable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat is the cost of lies?\u201d Valery Legasov (<strong>Jared Harris<\/strong>) asks in the opening moments of the HBO series\u2019 first episode, \u201c<strong>1:23:45<\/strong>.\u201d We don\u2019t know it yet, but Legasov was an expert chemist who was tasked with leading the committee investigating <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chernobyl_disaster\">the Chernobyl nuclear disaster<\/a>. When the series opens, he\u2019s speaking the long-suppressed truth about the disaster into a tape recorder. \u201cThere was nothing sane about Chernobyl,\u201d he says, his voice tinged with both weariness and certainty. When he\u2019s finished recording, he feeds his cat, smokes a cigarette, and unceremoniously hangs himself.<\/p>\n<p>The episode unfolds like a waking nightmare, and Legasov\u2019s suicide is the dark prologue that sets the tone. Directly afterward, a title on the screen marks a transition in time. \u201cTwo years and one minute earlier,\u201d it reads. A pregnant woman, Lyudmilla Ignatenko (<strong>Jessie Buckley<\/strong>), gets out of bed in the middle of the night and vomits in her bathroom. The whole house suddenly shakes. Out her window, we see a beam of light shooting straight up from a structure in the distance: the Chernobyl nuclear plant.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of \u201c1:23:45\u201d unfolds over the course of the first night of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, examining the ground level confusion, denial, and dread of a night in history that \u2014 as one of the wrenching end-title cards in the series\u2019 final episode states \u2014 resulted in somewhere between four-thousand and ninety-three-thousand deaths. All at once, it\u2019s a memorial, a cautionary tale, a historical document, and one of the most harrowing stories ever put to screen.<\/p>\n<p>After Lyudmilla awakens, the series cuts to the control room inside Chernobyl. There\u2019s dust shaking free from the jolted ceiling panels. The camera slowly rights itself from an off-kilter position, as if it, too, had been knocked askew during the explosion. \u201cWhat just h<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ened?\u201d deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov (<strong>Paul Ritter<\/strong>) asks, just before a man runs in to announce that the core itself has exploded.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone is quiet except Dyatlov, who quickly becomes the series\u2019 most clear-cut villain. He\u2019s the sort of bullying, eye-rolling boss we\u2019ve seen before, only in this case it\u2019s one who is making life-or-death decisions. \u201cWhat you\u2019re saying is physically impossible,\u201d he tells the shocked worker, more annoyed than scared. He decides that there must simply be a fire in the turbine hall due to a blown hydrogen tank, and he sends man after doomed man into the chaos to handle the problem.<\/p>\n<p>Dyatlov\u2019s moment-to-moment actions will be examined at length in the series finale, which follows the criminal trial in the disaster\u2019s aftermath. But even without context, he\u2019s a sickening on-screen presence. At one point, he looks down at sparkling debris on the ground, indicating that he may have seen the graphite that would prove the explosion was nuclear in nature hours before he gave up on his hydrogen fire theory. He shrugs off astronomical radiation readings as the result of faulty equipment, ignores the reddened faces of his radiation-poisoned employees, and only seems to see the true scale of the disaster in the light of day when a relentless pillar of smoke blocks out the rising sun. \u201c1:23:45\u201d spotlights many heroes from that night, but it\u2019s only fair that it shows us the cowards, too.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hbo.com\/chernobyl\/season-1\/1-12345\">behind-the-scenes feature<\/a> about the series, Mazin talks about the \u201ctriumph of delusion\u201d that made the Soviet Union more susceptible to denial and cover-up than other nations may have been. Dyatlov and others had a \u201ctrue belief in the dream of a utopia that never was going to be \u2014 and never was,\u201d Mazin says. And that point is hammered home by a scene midway through the premiere episode, in which the director of Chernobyl and members of the state gather to discuss next steps. At first, the group seems as if they might do the right thing: \u201cThe air is glowing,\u201d someone points out, indicating that the disaster seems a lot bigger than a control tank malfunction.<\/p>\n<p>A character named Zharkov (<strong>Donald Sumpter<\/strong>) takes the floor; he\u2019s fictional, but he clearly represents the old guard Soviet perspective. \u201cLeave matters of the state to the state,\u201d he says, before suggesting that they cut off the phone lines and keep people from leaving. He says the group will be rewarded for the choices they make on that day, and his speech is met with rapturous applause that quickly fades as the camera takes us back to ground zero.<\/p>\n<p><em>Chernobyl<\/em> functions as a specific historical text, one that\u2019s valuable not only for its scathing assertions about the nature of the Soviet Union\u2019s failures but also for its heartbreakingly human element. You don\u2019t need to know much about history to be gutted by the stories of first responders and community members \u2014 firefighters, plant employees, scientists, and even civilians \u2014 who were struck down while trying to help their communities, and whose stories were often scrubbed from official records. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, <em>Chernobyl<\/em> reads differently and hits closer to home just two years after its release, but it\u2019s a staggering story all on its own.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the episode unfolds in short snapshot moments that sear themselves in the memory, thanks in part to <strong>Johan Renck<\/strong>\u2019s tense direction and <strong>Jinx Godfrey<\/strong>\u2019s tight editing. Outside the facility, Lyudmilla\u2019s husband, firefighter Vasily (<strong>Adam Nagaitis<\/strong>), sees a coworker touch a piece of graphite in wonder. They\u2019ve been called to the plant to put out what they think is a run-of-the-mill fire, but Vasily is still anxious, telling his coworker not to mess with it. We soon see the coworker shaking his hands, but he doesn\u2019t put words to the sensations he\u2019s feeling. The next time we cut back to the firefighters, he\u2019s hunched on the ground, screaming, and his hand looks like chopped meat. By episode\u2019s end, he\u2019s rigid and unresponsive on the ground. The human body is no match for the power at play here.<\/p>\n<p>Acute radiation poisoning is an insidious monster, one that turns what could\u2019ve been a dry historical retelling into something more terrifying, unpredictable, and genre-busting. When plant employees are sent to check on the impacted parts of the building, we see a chain reaction of young men whose bodies seem to be boiling from the inside out. The symptoms of acute radiation poisoning, including vomiting, splotches of dark blood, sudden stiffness, and red, scalded faces, are almost too much to stomach, but Mazin and Renck understand the weight of this story and infuse each death scene with a sense of respect even as they call to mind sequences in particularly gruesome horror movies.<\/p>\n<p>Worse still are the people who don\u2019t know they\u2019re dead yet. In one scene, locals gather on a bridge to catch a glimpse of the fire. They call it beautiful, and we watch them in slow motion as radioactive ash starts to fall. Flakes land gently on a woman\u2019s face. Kids play in it like snow. It\u2019s a moment that would be wonderfully innocent in any other situation, but here, it\u2019s laced with almost unbearable dread. The final episode\u2019s epilogue will state that every one of these people reportedly died and that the place where they stood is now called \u201cThe Bridge of Death.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Chernobyl<\/em> is hard to watch, and it\u2019s also harder to re-watch and write about than anything else I\u2019ve written about for this column to date. It\u2019s a testament to the team behind the series that the story so effortlessly closes the distance between real-life history and a medium that\u2019s meant for entertainment; <em>Chernobyl<\/em> widens the definition of what TV can do simply by telling the truth in all its devastating detail. It\u2019s horrific and haunting, but it\u2019s also a small-screen masterpiece.\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/social-media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/chernobyl-episode-1-review\/#utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chernobyl-episode-1-review\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;#On the Particular Devastation of the &#8216;Chernobyl&#8217; Premiere&#8221; This essay is part of our series\u00a0Episodes, a column in which senior contributor\u00a0Valerie Ettenhofer digs into the singular chapters of television that make the medium great. This entry revisits the first episode (\u201c1:23:45\u201d) of HBO\u2019s limited series Chernobyl. History is, more often than not, a horrorshow. Some&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":269634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/filmschoolrejects.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Chernobyl_Premiere_Episode.jpeg.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[77422,7059],"class_list":["post-269633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-chernobyl","tag-episodes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}