Chernobyl 2019

Hot take incoming.

This is technically very impressive.
Visually, it's absolutely breathtaking.
The acting is impressive all across the board.
The make up, holy shit, take notes Walking Dead.
Thematically, it's very solid.
I even think that if you watch it as a documentary series, it's very good.
I acknowledge all of that.

But, this is a narrative series, and I have to judge it as such, meaning that story and characters come first.
And I just don't think it works on that level.
The characters in this are flat and uninteresting, and the story isn't told in a very engaging way.
It's a series that reminded me a lot of the movie Dunkirk, especially in the sense that it's more concerned about depicting the event it's covering accurately rather than engaging you.
Dunkirk in itself isn't a very special story, and Nolan didn't give any of his characters development either.
But here's the difference: Nolan's actually aware of that.
He also knows that messing with time, and making a puzzle box out of something like Dunkirk is a way to make the story more engaging.
Chernobyl doesn't do that, and keeps everything fairly linear, and to be frank, it doesn't do any attempt to engage the viewer at all.
It just assumes you're interested because this is important and recent history.
Unfortunately, that alone doesn't do the trick for me.

5/10

Chernobyl makes you feel as if you were there with the darkness, the music, the cinematography. Whether or not you remember the accident, you somehow get shivers down your spine whenever you hear the clicking of an R meter and as the clicking intensifies, so does your heart rate. It becomes a character in the series. The frustration of working through the problem while fighting through all the BS that comes from such a secretive state as the Soviet Union is played well. Stellan and Jared play this convincingly, both from the perspective of a career party man and that of a brilliant scientist who is just doing his job as a scientist with little care for the nuances of the CPSU.

My only complaint is episode 4. The dogs. The story line of the liquidators doing animal control is unnecessary and adds nothing to the story besides making you feel even more uneasy. You can skip those scenes entirely and lose nothing which begs the question... why even show it. The scenes in the control room are obviously romanticized because we really don't know what went on at 1:23:45 but we know from witness accounts that the mood was calm.

This production brings something back to attention we don't think about so much today. In fact, in my case, I don't think about it at all. And I was old enough to remember it well. But it is still there, the danger is not gone, it sleeps. And at some point in the future someone will have to deal with it again. Maybe they will play it down too and try to sweep it under the rug.

Ultimately it isn't important if the events depicted here are 100 % accurate. It is historical fiction. Even the producers will admit to that. It's about the dangers, the negligence, the bureaucracy in the system, all the lies and misinformation that lead to this desaster and the aftermath. It is about the price of the lies.

The state was unfailable and everything proofing otherwise simply doesn't exist. The former Soviet Union surely doesn't hold a monopol on those kind of things (heaven knows the US is no stranger to that), but they had this down to a T and turned this into an art. We see this again years later with the sinking of the Kursk.

I had to give this a "10" not because it is enjoyable but it is important to be reminded so that those things don't happen again. That's the wishful thinking. Sadly I'm fairly certain next time something big happens everything will repeat itself.

Amazing series depicting some events that, in it's own way, changed the world as we knew it. It's well-acted and concerning, especially since not much has changed since then. In the long run it's a story about a terrible man-made tragedy that effected many innocent people. The effects that a failing and distorted system filled with corruption and hubris has on those who are forced to live under it.

It's a story about the little man who has to clean up for the errors of those who control the strings and the few individuals who attempt to cut those strings in the name of justice and correctness. It's great to see a series where pretty much the "bad guys" can get sympathy and allows the viewer to see what extreme measures had to be taken by brave men who did what they had to (under duress or not).

I've never seen a documentary on Chernobyl, I vaguely remember being called in in school and not being allowed outside to play so I enjoyed this show very much. It also made me want to play STALKER again for the umpteenth time before giving up on it cause of lack of time or lack of skill.

Chernobyl is a must watch and will probably push you into the pit of all the great post-nuclear war/accident movies that are out there. Glad I got my iodine pills... Lots of good it's gonna do me or my families...