Living Under the Cloud: Chernobyl Today; Times Beach, Missouri: A Toxic Ghost Town

"Humanity is not really ready for the atom," says one of the interviewees in Living Under the Cloud: Chernobyl Today, a heartbreaking look at the continuing ill effects of the 1986 Chernobyl reactor explosions. Combining interviews with Soviet scientists (many of whom have since died) and shocking footage shot on location in and around the Chernobyl area, filmmakers Teresa Metcalf and Alice Bouvrie have created a chilling exposé of Soviet misinformation and outrageous indifference. One of the chief spokespersons, the ailing Dr. Vladimir Chernousenko, who was scientific director in charge of the Chernobyl clean-up, has devoted what's left of his life to telling the truths about Chernobyl. In one of the most horrendous sequences in the film, we see 18- year-old soldiers working in shifts trying to contain the spread of the radioactive materials at Chernobyl's fourth reactor. Each receives a scroll of honor for serving mother Russia: none is told that a 30 second dose is lethal and that they've each been given a death sentence. In the surrounding Ukraine countryside, people eat contaminated food, animals are dying, and children are born deformed. Living Under the Cloud is not a pleasant film to watch; it is, however, a timely reminder (especially as new plans for nuclear power are gearing up) that safety is not the real issue here. Regardless of the amount of bells and whistles used in warning systems, the cost in human tragedy is simply too high. An immensely sad but powerful indictment of the perils of nuclear power, Living Under the Cloud is highly recommended for those with strong environmental collections.During the opening minutes of Times Beach, Missouri: A Toxic Ghost Town, I was reminded of Joseph Wambaugh's most recent novel Finnegan's Week. In Wambaugh's book, simple guys illegally haul away mislabeled toxic waste and set off a tragicomic chain of events. In Times Beach, Missouri, a blue collar trucker named Russell Bliss picks up so-called "waste oil" from a chemical plant and sprays it around Times Beach, Missouri to keep the dust down. This was in 1973. Ten years later, Times Beach looked like a set from Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain as people in white insulated spacesuits with a whole array of testing devices descended on the town. We were "treated like pariahs" according to one resident, who added that the prevailing attitude among the researchers was "don't get near ‘em." Eventually, the federal government would condemn and buy its first town because of the high levels of dioxin in the waste oil sprayed by Bliss around Times Beach. Winner of a Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, Bruce Lixey's Times Beach, Missouri is part bizarre Americana, part condemnation of the roles the EPA and CDC played in the Times Beach disaster, and part cautionary tale about the dangers of toxic pollution. Highly recommended. [Note: this is being sold to individuals at $39.95.] (R. Pitman)