Totally Under Control
If you want to know just how up-to-date Alex Gibney and his co-directors, Ophelia Harutyunyan & Suzanne Hillinger, made their film about America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it ends with a title card how, the day after this film was completed, President Donald Trump announced that he tested positive for COVID. That was in the early hours of October 2; I watched this film on October 10.
Two hours is not nearly long enough to look at the ways COVID-19 exposed every failing of the United States in how it operates, not just during the Trump administration, but in epidemic failures like the health care system, income inequality, climate change, and the politicization of the media that existed prior to Trump’s presidency. That would be why Gibney, Harutyunyan and Hillinger focus on the Trump administration response that led to over 200,000 dying in America, and compare it to the response of South Korea, which had its first coronavirus case discovered on the same day. Prepare to be pissed off all over again.
How the filmmakers made this documentary over the past few months, with no peep of its existence, is pretty remarkable, but seeing a glimpse of the setup they made to be able to safely conduct their interviews is impressive, and indicative of how Gibney and co. take seriously the weight of what happened. This isn’t just doing Zoom interviews, but making a documentary with talking head interviews using protective measures to do in-person interviews while maintaining a safe distance. It’s a rare glimpse behind the curtain that leaves us in awe of their commitment to safety, which makes the content of the film all the more infuriating.
Gibney has never been one to why away from controversial subjects, from Scientology (“Going Clear”), corporate corruption (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”), genocide (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) and whistleblowing in the digital age (“We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks”)- deciding to take on the Trump response to coronavirus is right up his alley. We don’t get any official responses from the White House, the HHS and the CDC in the interviews, but we probably would know what to expect anyway, after having listened to months of conflicting messaging in the news on the reg. Instead, we get context provided by doctors on the front lines in hospitals; the words of a volunteer who was part of Jared Kushner’s response team in acquiring materials; of people who used to work for the administration, and who didn’t when their alarms about the pandemic did not equal the messaging the administration wanted to convey; and of health professionals as diverse as Eva Lee, someone who was known as a top disease modeler (being able to show how a disease spreads), and Vladimir Zelenko, the family doctor in New York who really promoted the idea of Hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for COVID-19, which led to it being hyped up by Trump, despite not clinical studies showing that was the case. He was honestly the last person I expected to see in this documentary, but I’m glad he’s there, if only for context.
Chances are, you are going to have your mind made up about this film based on your feelings about Trump. I think Gibney and his collaborators are fully prepared for that, which is why Trump and co.’s words are front-and-center as the timeline moves forward in the pandemic, including his recently-released words to Bob Woodward about how he knew how serious COVID was on February 7; after that, he was still downplaying it in press conferences, and stalling taking measures that could have aided everyone when it came to providing PPE equipment to health care workers and testing for the public. Unfortunately, personal hubris got in the way, and there are the families of 200,000 victims left with grief and financial ruin in its wake, and millions of others waiting to see whether this all might change in November. In the land of the free, we shouldn’t have to wait for others to act so that we can pursue life, liberty and happiness without worrying about our lives collapsing in an instant.
