osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2020-08-30 08:50 am
osprey_archer) wrote2020-08-30 08:50 am
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The Babushkas of Chernobyl
The Babushkas of Chernobyl is a 2015 documentary about the old women who live in the Chernobyl exclusion zone - that is, the area in Ukraine and Belarus that is officially unsafe for human habitation on account of high levels of radiation. (It’s not 100% clear to me if only women returned to the exclusion zone after the disaster, or if the men who went died faster, leaving the area overwhelmingly inhabited by women.)
Honestly I expected this to be rather grim. After all, these women have all had such hard lives: in their youth they suffered the one-two punch of the famine of the 1930s followed by World War II; and forty years later, just as they’re embarking on retirement and old age, there’s the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and they were forced out of the villages where they’ve lived their entire lives despite war and famine. And then they come back to live out their days in their poisoned homes.
But in fact the documentary is unexpectedly charming, in a post-apocalyptic cottagecore kind of way. Yes, absolutely, these gorgeous mushrooms that the babushkas are so lovingly gathering are undoubtedly raising their radiation levels… but on the other hand, when you’re ninety years old surely you get to live however you want, and these women clearly feel they’re living their best lives. When you haven’t got much time left on earth, why not live out your days as a hunter-gatherer-gardener in a lush, fertile, largely depopulated forest mainly inhabited by wolves?
Are you afraid of the wolves? one of the filmmakers asks one of the babushkas. “I’m not afraid of anything, darling,” the babushka replies. A still image of this moment is the reason I watched the movie in the first place: even in the still photograph, you can tell that she means it. She’s seen everything and come out the other side of fear.
Honestly I expected this to be rather grim. After all, these women have all had such hard lives: in their youth they suffered the one-two punch of the famine of the 1930s followed by World War II; and forty years later, just as they’re embarking on retirement and old age, there’s the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and they were forced out of the villages where they’ve lived their entire lives despite war and famine. And then they come back to live out their days in their poisoned homes.
But in fact the documentary is unexpectedly charming, in a post-apocalyptic cottagecore kind of way. Yes, absolutely, these gorgeous mushrooms that the babushkas are so lovingly gathering are undoubtedly raising their radiation levels… but on the other hand, when you’re ninety years old surely you get to live however you want, and these women clearly feel they’re living their best lives. When you haven’t got much time left on earth, why not live out your days as a hunter-gatherer-gardener in a lush, fertile, largely depopulated forest mainly inhabited by wolves?
Are you afraid of the wolves? one of the filmmakers asks one of the babushkas. “I’m not afraid of anything, darling,” the babushka replies. A still image of this moment is the reason I watched the movie in the first place: even in the still photograph, you can tell that she means it. She’s seen everything and come out the other side of fear.