Chernobyl (2019)

Sam and I watched this when it originally came out in 2019, but reading through Tony Judt’s Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 has tickled my longstanding interest in Russian culture and so I decided to rewatch the HBO Chernobyl miniseries again.

I’m not going to comment on whether the miniseries is an accurate representation of Russian culture. Anyway, the programme is still very good.

Now, I did think that the whole “the core purpose of the Soviet Union was to lie and shift around blame” stuff was a little heavyhanded. Maybe not totally off-base, but I don't need to be hammered over the head with it. The part where Shcherbina shows up and immediately Bryukhanov is like, “Here’s a list of the people responsible!” is fun and upsetting; but it’s also the capstone on maybe 4 or 5 scenes where his only lines are, “I’m definitely not to blame for this.” And the whole What is the cost of lies? bit that bookends the series lays it on thickly. I've just watched 5 episodes about the cost of lies, I know what the cost of lies is. Hey guys, did you know that lies and coverups were endemic in Soviet political culture? Wow!

Where the show ✨ shines ✨ is in its atmosphere. Oooh yeah give me more of those abstract patterns on wallpaper, on plush drapery, on shabby linoleum. I need more of those big Soviet mosaics, more poured concrete flowerboxes, more bare pipework in khruschyovka hallways. More painted iron doors with stencilled Cyrillic text on it. The stuffy rubberised liquidator suits. Those roughed-up plastic slides that Legasov uses during the trial to visualise nuclear activity inside of the core. The tiles inside of Moscow Hospital No. 6. The plastic curtains and pus-stained pillows. The big diesel trucks, the polyester suits, the drinking glasses and enamelware cups clinking against bottles of vodka. The fonts they used for the titles!

If it weren’t y’know in the midst of a total economic and political meltdown, I would have loved to live in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. To sit in my cramped kitchen reading state-approved literature. To wear sweater-vests and thick Bakelite eyeglasses. Like from a purely aesthetic point of view. I guess that’s why they keep putting Chernobyl in video games. It tickles the same itch for me as Miyazaki movies: a world I want to sink my fingers into and squeeze until my knuckles split.

I should move to Stevenage.