Has anyone else been watching this? It's incredibly well-done. The visuals are stunning and haunting, and it's written well--just enough scientific jargon to make it sound credible without losing the audience. And I am now well-aware that a Geiger counter is also a dosimeter. And I know a lot more about how a nuclear reactor works.
Some mildly spoilery stuff ahead.
They build an incredible amount of tension for a show where we know how things are going to turn out. We know that those firefighters aren't going to make it, and that's what makes it so tense--because you know they don't know, and you know they're going to find out eventually. You cringe every time someone gets close, because you know they're going to die. And yet people kept going, some of them because they didn't understand what was happening, some of them because the job had to be done. So much individual valor and tragedy, and then there's the Soviet political machine overlaying everything. Within that, you feel the tension between people whose only priority is their political career, those who reluctantly see that too many lives are at stake and that maybe they need at least some honesty, and those who are only interested in keeping the disaster from deepening. It feels like a political thriller and a horror movie rolled up in one, made all the more compelling because of course it's true.
Some mildly spoilery stuff ahead.
They build an incredible amount of tension for a show where we know how things are going to turn out. We know that those firefighters aren't going to make it, and that's what makes it so tense--because you know they don't know, and you know they're going to find out eventually. You cringe every time someone gets close, because you know they're going to die. And yet people kept going, some of them because they didn't understand what was happening, some of them because the job had to be done. So much individual valor and tragedy, and then there's the Soviet political machine overlaying everything. Within that, you feel the tension between people whose only priority is their political career, those who reluctantly see that too many lives are at stake and that maybe they need at least some honesty, and those who are only interested in keeping the disaster from deepening. It feels like a political thriller and a horror movie rolled up in one, made all the more compelling because of course it's true.