History, Drama, Retelling: Intermedial Realism in Chernobyl

Despite the fictional reconstruction of the set, the persuasive effectiveness of the miniseries Chernobyl (HBO, 2019) comes from its documentary approach (Odin 2013; Ricoeur 1983). It is not just about historical accuracy in representing places and people, furnishings, clothing, technology, etc. The "figures" of the invisible radiation death are achieved through a sound design (by Hildur Guðnadóttir) that remixes Geiger counters; the scenes of the contaminated urban spaces and forests are based on iconographic sources from photo reports at the disaster site (by Igor Kostin or by Robert Polidori); characters and narrative situations (e.g., the death of the young firefighter) are created using investigative literature (by Svetlana Aleksievič 2005) of interviews with survivors and their families as source texts. After the fictional finale, Chernobyl opens to a long documentary sequence with photos and archive footage that is a political commentary on the nuclear disaster and its management. It is an intermedial extension and a cinematic and meta-discursive sequence, that strengthens the credibility of the TV series production and of the artistic operation, building an ethical relationship with the viewer.