do you know how old i am? i don’t know. old. i’m 82. i’ve lived here my whole life. right here, that house, this place. what do i care about safe? i have a job. don’t cause trouble. trouble? you’re not the first soldier to stand here with a gun. when i was 12, the revolution came. czar’s men. then bolsheviks. boys like you marching in lines. they told us to leave. no. then there was stalin and his famine, the holodomor. my parents died. two of my sisters died. they told the rest of us to leave. no. then the great war. german boys. russian boys. more soldiers, more famine, more bodies. my brother never came home. but i stayed, and i’m still here. after all that i have seen… so i should leave now, because of something i cannot see at all? no.
there are many amazing cinematic scenes in Chernobyl, but i think my favorite is this 20 second shot is during the trial in episode 5.
The camera rises with him and follows around the table to the podium. It’s not an even level shot though. It begins to sway as he fidgets with his tie, but stays focused on his face.
The combination of the sway, lighting, and sound design (which is to say the silence except for Legasov’s footsteps and one released breath) do everything to both perfectly imply his mental state and drop a viewer into the same twisting anxiety.
“To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for truth, we fail to consider how few actually wants us to find it. But it is always there, whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth does not care about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where once I would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask, what is the cost of lies?” Chernobyl (2019)
To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for truth, we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there, whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants, it doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie and wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask ‘what is the cost of lies?’
Chernobyl (2019) – Episode 5 “Vichnaya Pamyat", dir. Johan Renck
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