Wiggly Socks Movie Reviews

By Linda Winsh-Bolard

Among films exploring human tragedies, one can fare much worse than this.

On April 25 1986 a boy called Valery plants an apple tree. Valery and his tree are the same height. Valery's dad Alexei helps him. Alexei is an engineer at the local nuclear energy plant. The same day a young woman, Anya, is getting married to a fireman Piotr, in all the splendor of Soviet Union.

Pripjat, where they live, is getting ready for the celebration of May 1st. The new amusement park will open that day.
Pripjat is a small town of 50,000 people with fields, livestock, old houses with gardens, the Soviet build apartment buildings ,cinemas, grocery stores and even a concert hall. A river runs through it.

Three miles from the town is the nuclear energy plant that blew up, in what is generally known as the Chernobyl meltdown.

For Pripjat's people, April 26, 1986 is a day like many others, sunny, pleasant time, in a town perceived as happy and beautiful.

Until the rain starts, the animals start dying and then the rain turns black.

No one , with the exception of the plant's crew, knew that there was a radiation leak. The Soviets did not want to spoil the nationwide May 1st festivities.

Pripjat was evacuated , the day after the accident, but even then few knew why and how final was their leaving.

This is very visual film. Shots of sky , first lovely summer day's sky, then slowly of sky freezing over, then the dark ominous cloud passing through it, the rain, the props, the landscape, animals and a whole gamut of human sketches; people doing ordinary things, playing, working, having dinner, as we all do every day, and then, after the meltdown, being taken away from all they know and want, even their animals, is a powerful tool. Visually there is hardly any fault with the film.

The narrative is not nearly as strong. The beginning, introduction to life and the actual tragedy works out fine. The return to hell that became a tourist trap, in here facilitated by Chernobyl Tours that for $300 per person (an astonishing sum of money in Ukraine) will take anyone on a day tour through Pripjat and Chernobyl in a bus while Anya narrates the past of the meltdown, is also fine, but when it comes to the human part of the story, to Anya, Valery and Alexei, things fall apart. Valery comes out best, but none of the story hangs right or feels right. This is not because they live through a tragedy, in this world many do, but because their humanity is not as much fragile, or hurt as unlikely.

It is more understandable, if you know more about the consequences of radiation poisoning, particularly in Chernobyl, but not more likely.
From the dreadful moment when Anya is denied seeing her newlywed husband because: "he became a reactor, he is not a human anymore, and if you see him, you will die too", the nurse tells Anya in the hospital, we are left to find what Anya, Valery and Alexei feel and want by mistakes and trials. This is undoubtedly meant to reflect the human experience of the people of Chernobyl area, but it does not work in film, nor is the effect the same for an audience in a movie theater, as it is for people facing sudden loss and uncertainty in real life.

Still, it is a film that has much to say, says some of it powerfully, and makes you think. Well worth seeing.

Directed by: Michale Bogamin, Starring: Olga Kurylenko, Andrzej Chyra, Ilya Iosifov, Sergei Strelnikov, Vyacheslav Slanko, Script and story: Michale Bogamin, AntoineLacomblez, Anne Weil
Camera: Antoine Heberle, Music: Leszek Mozdzer , Editing: Herve de Luze,Thierry Derocles, Anne Weil