MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Raspad’ Takes a Bold, Epic Look at Chernobyl

Ukrainian writer-director Mikhail Belikov’s “Raspad” (opening Friday at the Monica 4-Plex), which translates from the Russian as “chaos” or “calamity,” represents one of the most difficult kinds of filmmaking.

In tackling the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, Belikov faced the challenge of making the catastrophe seem personal without losing sight of its full magnitude and meaning, of expressing his sense of personal outrage without being merely preachy, of being truthful about nuclear horrors without making them seem unbearable to watch. Since Belikov, his co-writer Oleg Prihodko and his colleagues succeeded on all counts, “Raspad” emerges as a triumph of absorbing and provocative mainstream activist cinema.

Indicative of the film’s deftness is the subtlety with which Belikov introduces a bit of foreshadowing. It’s April, 1986, and Kiev journalist Alexander Zhuravlev (Sergei Shakurov) has just returned from an assignment in Greece but has forgotten to bring back with him a handful of Greek soil requested by his father in commemoration of the family’s Greek ancestry. At a party celebrating his return, he’s persuaded to deceive his father with some local turf.

Belikov treats this incident casually, not worrying whether we remember it. Yet when we recall it, it sets off a reverberation, at once anticipating the deception with which Chernobyl was initially handled by the Soviet government and echoing the larger deception that characterized Soviet rule for so many decades. While watching “Raspad” was a powerful experience before the downfall of the Soviet Union, it is even more so now, with the disaster itself taking on deeper symbolic meaning, and the courage of Belikov and his gifted cast and crew in making the film seem all the more impressive. (The ubiquitousness of Lenin, in statues and portraits everywhere, seems particularly striking today.) Zhuravlev emerges as the film’s key figure, with Chernobyl representing a challenge to his integrity in his determination to cover the story, and it’s through him and a few of his friends that we gradually begin to experience the growing impact of the nuclear disaster.

Meanwhile, there’s tension between Zhuravlev and his younger wife (Tatiana Kochemasova), whose friend from school (Alexii Gorbunov) may or may not be her lover but is a high Communist Party official who knows the truth about Chernobyl, which the journalist no more wants to believe when he hears it than anyone else.

Once Belikov has set Zhuravlev’s story in motion he and his resourceful cinematographers Vacilii Trsuhkovskii and Alexander Shagaev pull back to create a panoramic, documentary-like re-creation of the disaster and its aftermath--the burning reactor, the rushing firetrucks, the growing hysteria among the public resulting in riotous conditions at the Kiev train station as people struggle to get as far away from the potentially contaminated region as possible. So in control is Belikov that he can drop in vignettes involving others not connected directly with Zhuralev--the young couple saddled with a grandfather, the boy whose parents are away when Pripyat, the bleak housing project where most of the Chernobyl workers live, is evacuated.

At once intimate and epic, “Raspad” (Times-rated Mature for much emotional intensity) possesses tremendous scope and comparable energy and fervor. A final touch of irony: The word chernobyl, we learn, means “a large variety of wormwood, often prescribed for epilepsy and schizophrenia.”

‘Raspad’

Sergei Shakurov: Alexander Zhuravlev

Tatiana Kochemasova: Lyudmilla Zhuravlev

Alexii Gorbunov: Shurik

Georgii Drozd: Anatolii Stepanovich

An MK2 Productions USA release of a Dovzhenko Studios/Lavra Studios in association with Peter O. Almond and the Pacific Film Fund. Director Mikhail Belikov. Producer Mikhail Kostiukovskii. Screenplay by Belikov, Oleg Prihodko. Cinematographer Vacilii Trushkovskii, Alexander Shagaev. Costumes Valentina Gorlan. Music Igor Stentcuk. Production design Inna Bichenkova. Art director Vacilii Zaruba. Sound Tom Johnson. In Russian with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (for much emotional intensity).