Chernobyl finale review – when the dust settles, it will be considered a classic
Asignature of Sky and HBO’s Chernobyl series has been its ability to tell the story of the doomed Soviet power plant through imagery, often with a precision that evokes Andrei Tarkovsky himself.
The fifth and final episode is no different. It opens with a slow, ambient montage of sunny Pripyat. Couples stroll in the gardens or swim in the communal pool. Children cavort in the playground. Lyudmilla Ignatenko smiles as her husband, Vasily, plays with their neighbour’s children.
We have been taken back in time, 12 hours before the disaster at reactor No 4. As Pripyat blissfully goes about its day, a safety test is planned at Chernobyl HQ. Promotions are promised if everything goes to plan. There is some concern over productivity quotas; Kiev has called to warn there might not be enough power to run the reactor safely. A delay is mooted, but Moscow is expectant. The test will go ahead. Hours later, Vasily will be one of the first responders at the explosion.
In Vienna, months after the explosion, Jared Harris’s Valery – who keeps finding tufts of his hair falling from his scalp – meets with the KGB’s Chairman Charkov. Valery has dutifully engaged in “statecraft” and lied to the gathered scientists. “I think you made an
excellent impression at the conference,” Charkov says.
Valery, we learn, has entered into a faustian pact. He has told the world what the KGB wanted him to say in return for “assurances” that the remaining reactors will be quietly dealt with. Nothing has been done. But Charkov makes his priorities clear; first, a show trial of Chernobyl’s directors, where Valery must lie again. “We will have our heroes, we will have our villains, we will have our truth,” Charkov says. “After that, we can deal with our reactors.”
Chernobyl was the disaster of a state built on the cult of obedience. The final episode, and indeed the series as a whole, has hinged on a single question: can Valery bring himself to tell the truth, even if doing so would be futile and suicidal?
When the toxic dust settles on this show, director Johan Renck and screenwriter Craig Mazin will be remembered for crafting a remarkably cogent and multivalent drama, one aided by impeccable performances; Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson have each never been better.
The verisimilitude of the show is exemplary. Many of the characters, such as Lyudmilla and Vasily Ignatenko, are based on testimony given to Svetlana Alexievich for her Nobel prizewinning 2015 book Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. But Chernobyl has also defined itself by its ability to use genre tropes from other dystopias – which, in turn, were influenced by the event itself. The series has exhibited usages of body horror that David Cronenberg would be proud of. Or there are the slow, foreboding scenes of wind shivering through the trees that feel familiar to George A Romero and the countless zombie horror films he spawned.
In this episode, Chernobyl shows itself a dab hand as a courtroom drama, as we switch between the hermetic environs of the trial and the stress of the control room in the hours leading up to the explosion. In doing so, the show allows a wider philosophical question to play out - should the true always be told, regardless of its cost? Is the truth worth it?
As London rolls out the red carpet for Donald Trump, it is worth noting Chernobyl’s active focus on the power of the “official truth”. The largest release of nuclear fall-out in the history of humanity was made possible by the lies perpetuated at the highest levels of government, abetted by a media that wilfully engaged in propaganda and the dissemination of false information. It happened because scientific research was dismissed or suppressed when it didn’t fit with the agenda of the authorities. The series rams this point home, and is all the better for it.
Is this relevant today? Well, 54 nuclear power plants are currently under construction in 16 countries, with 454 active plants across the world. This is in a time of resurgent nationalist authoritarianism the world over, not to mention the unpredictable weather events and seismic shifts that, thanks to our rapid warming of the climate, are increasing in regularity and scale. Lest we forget, in the course of this decade, Fukushima – a plant in one of most advanced and internationally compliant states in the world – went into meltdown because of a freak weather event.
Yet the series is also hopeful. It pays homage to the 600,000 people, many of whom, without ever being named or recognised, can legitimately be credited for saving the lives of millions of people. As Tarkovsky did in Stalker, the iconic Russian film that seemed to foretell the disaster, Renck and Mazin have heightened their characters’ stories through the sudden, forensic focus on seemingly happenstance details. In one moment in this final episode, Skarsgård’s Boris Shcherbina pauses to watch a tiny green caterpillar climb up his thumb. It is like a prophecy in itself – amid unimaginable horror, tragedy and decay, nature always has the power to rejuvenate. “Ahhh,” he sighs. “It’s beautiful.” I quite agree.