Chernobyl is an HBO miniseries 5
episodes long that chronicle the devastating real-life events that took place
in 1986 at a nuclear power station in northern Ukraine this is a story of one
of the world's worst man-made catastrophes and we follow a group of people some
real some fictional as they try to deal with this disaster so yeah I am way
behind on this one I mean when it comes to TV shows I usually tend to be that the guy that waits for other people to say that they're really great before I
invest the time in them because they take a lot more time than a movie I like
to be an early adopter of a film but I'm usually late to the party when it
comes to great TV I wait for people to tell me Game of Thrones is good and then
I watch it I wait for people that I'm with the Breaking Bad was good and then I
watch it so in the case of Chernobyl as soon as everyone was saying it was like
the greatest show ever in fact on IMDB it's been ranked as the number-one
highest-rated TV show of all time naturally I wanted to watch it and it is
great one of the things that strikes me the most about this show is the sense
of realism when it comes to TV and especially movies directors like to make
things seem really big and in the case of this miniseries there are parts that
are fiction there are characters that don't exist in real life representing
entire groups of people and there are conversations that nobody could possibly
know what exactly was said private moments and those have obviously been
created for our entertainment but there's a grounded sense to this show that
feels as if it's pushing for realism when most of the time in movies are TV
they might try to get really big and have these grand moments but there's
plenty of scenes that go over in excruciating detail how a nuclear power the station works just exactly why this problem is so devastating and what it can
mean four thousand and thousands of people over the course of many many years
and in that way, the show is terrifying because sure some of those scenes can be
looked at as exposition for the audience and in many ways, it is we have to
understand how these things work to understand why we should be afraid of them
those scenes are handled with such care from
the director and the writer that
those proceedings feel very raw and they remind us just how scary this planet
can be when things go wrong and in the case of Chernobyl a lot of things went
wrong and a lot of it is built around people who were lying and people who
never thought anything bad would happen to them there's one specific scene
where two characters played by stone skarsgård and Jared Harris they're sitting
down talking about how most people just assume that things don't happen to them
they go on with their lives knowing that they'll die when they're 85 and
everything's going to be fine but sometimes that doesn't happen and we had an entire group of people who just assumed nothing was going to happen and we got
Chernobyl out of it and this show is meticulous in its craft of exploring this an event exploring the horror of it the chaos of it but also showcasing characters
that just assumed everything was going to be fine and we're gonna get into some
spoilers here so if you have not yet seen Chernobyl I highly recommend it it's
definitely, an excellent miniseries and worth your time just purely forward the
directing and writing craft alone but especially for some of the performances
like JaredHarris who gives I think the best performance of his entire career
stellanskarsgård is also really strong here a sis Emily Watson so now that we
got the spoiler warning out of the way there's a woman in the TV show who is
pregnant and her husband's a firefighter who went initially to try to put out
the flames that this disaster started and she just follows her husband
everywhere he thinks he's gonna be okay he's playing cards his skin is melting
away and he thinks everything's just gonna be fine and despite being pregnant
she's there right by his side getting infected by that radiation characters in
this show make decisions that turn your stomach there's a sequence where people
have to go into a town and just kill all the animals so if you have a thing with dead dogs this show was gonna fuck you up holy shit
they knew where
to turn the screws to make you feel as if you were watching an event that was
absolutely excruciating to live through but at the same time it honors those
who were first responders who were victims of the event and especially with the final episode you learn of just the extent of the corruption that was going on
behind the scenes that made everything possible and it pisses you off you know
it makes you mad and it should because this should never happen again an event
like this which is something that I heard quite a bit about when I was a kid
this should never exist like this is not something that should ever occur
on our planet and so it makes you mad it makes you want to make sure that that
never happens again it makes you want to do something and that's awesome that a
miniseries can do that purely from a creative side though what's so interesting
to me about this series is the writer Craig Mazin and his journey because if you
look at his filmography he has made tons of spoof movies he wrote some of the
scary movie films he wrote superhero movie The Hangover Part 2 The Hangover
Part 3 identity thief and now suddenly he just shows up and is like hey I wrote
Chernobyl fuck you how did that happen that's awesome good job man like that's
really fucking cool love whenever a writer or a director is able to reinvent themselves
and they just say like actually I'd rather be doing this or not necessarily
that he'd rather be doing this but just that hey you don't have to stay and do
the exact same thing for your entire career you can also have strengths and
other fields so this tells me studios out there don't put your creative people
in a box don't assume that X person can only do comedy don't assume that Y a person can only do drama everybody has strengths and weaknesses but you can
explore what you would love to do and find ways to make that possible so it's
kind of inspiring if you look at his career trajectory and see where he's gone
it kind of makes you want to say the hell with it and just starts writing your
screenplay don't listen to other people just open up that computer and start
writing it doesn't matter whether people think just work on it and
I didn't
expect to be that inspired by just looking at his filmography but I've never
seen such a change Johan rank and I apologize if I said that incorrectly lens a steady hand to this entire show it's beautifully shot he's mostly known for
music videos and some TV like Breaking Bad in the Bates Motel and here he
brings something to it that again just feels very grounded at times you feel
like an observer a fly-on-the-wall, it's a bit documentary esque but not as
hand-held as you might expect from something like paul green grass and his the approach there's a lockdown sensibility to the way he Helms this show and it's
really really well done and he knows just when to end an episode the shot that
is going to leave you as chilled as you possibly could be when it comes to
negatives there's like one kind of slow episode the second for the last episode
is probably the weakest that episode didn't feel as strong as the others didn't
feel as emotionally tormenting as the others and that's about it and even when
I say that it wasn't as good as the others it was still great because the episode has this rooftop scene that is just so nail-biting and terrifying so
it's hard to find a weak link in the show it's really strong and I highly
suggest checking it out I'm gonna give Chernobyl an a definitely check this one
out guys, I do think it's worth your time and I'm sorry then it took me so long
to watch it I've just been like super busy and as I said sometimes I don't
really jump on board with TV shows until I hear that they're really great but
I'm excited I did get to see it and I hope you guys check it out too if you
haven't already I do also want to give a big thank you Chernobyl already they
have some documentaries about that event including nature fights back in
Chernobyl this is a French film where the filmmakers actually go directly into the
exclusion zone and butterfly effect Chernobyl this is part of a popular series
that envisions what would happen if things went differently during turning
points in our history thank you guys so much as always for reading my movie reviews and thank you guys are
the best look forward to more reviews very soon and if you like this you can
comment write here and get stuck mine eyes
0 Comments