Lex Fridman: uncertainty

Transcript context

…I was. I was and I think that the mini-series are very truthful on a number of levels and very untruthful on some others. And they got very well the macro and micro levels. So the macro level is the issue of the big truth and the story there is very much built around the theme that I just discussed now. It’s about the cost of lies and the Soviet Union lying to the people. And that’s what the film explores. So that, I call it a big truth about Chernobyl. And they got a lot of minor things really, really very well. Like the curtains on the windows, like how the houses looked from inside and outside. I didn’t see any post-Soviet film or any western film that would be so good at capturing those everyday details. But then there is a huge gray area in between big truth and small truths of recreating the environment. And that’s how you get from one to another. And then you see the KGB officers coming and taking someone out of the meeting and arresting, which was not necessary. You see the Soviet boss threatening someone to throw the person from the helicopter. So you get these Hollywood sort of things despite the fact that it’s HBO series. And they’re the best really as a film in the fourth episode where they completely decided just to hell with the reality and let’s make a film. So they bring Legasov, one of the key characters, to the court meetings. They bring Soviet party boss, Shcherbina, he wasn’t there. They created drama there. So they got the main thing, the big truth right, and that’s why I like this production. Sometimes to show what something felt like you have to go bigger than it actually was. If you… I don’t know. If you experience heartbreak and you see a film about it, you want there to be explosions. You want to see this in images. Visible, right? But the question again, I just mentioned KGB marching in and some party leader giving a speech, they were not giving that speech, but the sense was there and it was in the air and I, as people of my generation who were there, knew that and recognized that. But for new generation, whether they are in Ukraine and Russia, in US, in Britain, in Zimbabwe, anywhere, you have do these little untruths and introduce them. And I had a very interesting on-air conversation with the author of the script, Mazin, and I asked him the question of the film declared really the importance of the truth, but how do you square that with the need in the film, to really put it mildly, to go beyond the measures of truth, whatever understanding of that term is?…

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