Nanfu Wang follows ‘One Child Nation’ with a revealing investigation for HBO about the outbreak of COVID-19 and the common line of disinformation of Chinese and American leaders.
In the closing moments of her hard-hitting account of the inadequate management of the government and the media in the COVID-19 pandemic in China and the USA, director Nanfu Wang says: “I lived under authoritarianism and lived in a society that calls itself free; in In both systems, ordinary people become victims of their leaders’ quest for power. “Like last year 76 days, the first half of Wang’s film is an urgent and immersive recap of the chaos that dominated Wuhan at the start of the outbreak in early 2020. The second half turns its haunted gaze to the arrival of the virus on the American shores and the refusal to pay ample attention. warning signs and contain the foreseeable spread.
As its fascinating 2019 feature, Nation of a child (co-directed with Jialing Zhang, who acts here as a producer), Wang’s new film, which will air on HBO this year, benefits immensely from the insights of his dual training. She grew up in China believing that Communist Party propaganda was the norm, but she immigrated to America nine years ago, starting a family here and changing her perspective. The director’s personal investment is evident, from the panic to get his 2-year-old American son home safely after a Chinese New Year visit, to worries about his mother, who lives in a city 320 kilometers east of Wuhan.
But even when accessing the situation remotely through on-site camera operators and citizen journalists, Wang skillfully balances factoids with first-hand experiences to show the emotional cost, both for people who can’t say goodbye to loved ones and professionals frontline health workers and funeral directors, absorbing the trauma of relentless losses. The eloquent solemnity of rows and rows of new headstones in a Wuhan cemetery reaches a plaintive tone as Wang reflects on authoritarian leaders using national crises to promote autocratic measures.
The film ends with footage of the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Wuhan in the beginning and end of 2020. A spectacular light show animates the skyline and the majestic bridge that spans the Yangtze River, while balloons float and crowds crowd the streets and squares, as well as cities around the world. Against the backdrop of Communist Party pomp and patriotic music, President Xi Jinping addresses the nation the next morning, promising a landmark year of prosperity. A newsletter later that day about Wuhan police punishing eight people for spreading rumors online of unknown pneumonia was lost at the festivities.
“It was the last moment I remember when the world still looked normal,” says Wang in the economic narrative that punctuates the film, which traces the first infections of the virus until December 2019.
Even if you followed the news at the time, the report here of the outbreak of COVID-19 is stunning and the retention of information by the Chinese government is well known of what happened in the United States in the months that followed. After minimizing the threat and denying the risk of transmission from person to person, despite crowded hospitals, people dying on the streets and others turning to social media for treatment, China’s state media framed the reports as a demonstration of national strength to conquer adversity.
With 1,500 cases reported in China, Wang began campaigning with the American media for coverage, but initially no newspaper continued the story. Then she contacted local camera staff to film at hospitals in Wuhan, where both patients and doctors in anti-hazard clothing close up or respond with extreme caution due to government restrictions on information. However, there are moving signs of suffering behind the gag order, like an elderly man hospitalized with a relatively mild infection, desperately trying to see his severely ill son of 31 years, lying intubated, silent and out of reach.
Wang has expanded his network to contact doctors at private clinics, including one near the seafood market, identified as the possible source of the virus. The closed-circuit video of countless patients arriving with flu-like symptoms over four days in December indicates the scale of the pandemic to come. One doctor at that clinic was infected and discharged from one city hospital after another, informed that there was no treatment available, even after a CT scan revealed lung damage. The man’s widow, who last saw him being taken by ambulance, is one among several citizens who were encouraged by his pain to speak.
A two-week annual congress meeting was a bad time to announce the spread of a new SARS-like virus, so it wasn’t until January 20 that state media recognized the risk of contagion. Three days later, Wuhan, a city of 11 million, was blocked, with hospitals immediately overflowing and ambulances being refused. Wang and co-editor Michael Shade bring these establishing chapters together in a propelling, often deeply distressing narrative, highlighted by a Nathan Halpern track that is alternately sad and suspenseful.
Reports of patients who succumbed to suffocation, some of them dying in hospital lobbies while waiting for a bed, are now familiar, but no less shocking, especially when contextualized against the positive tone of news designed to inspire confidence and hope, announcing doctors as “angels in white.” “The government was telling us where to look, while telling us where not to look,” said Wang.
This situation is reflected in the United States as soon as the news finally penetrates the national bubble, received by the guarantees of “totally under control” by Donald Trump. The famous catchphrases about the virus’s disappearance in April, with a warmer climate, are associated with the call of state and federal authorities for Americans to continue their normal lives and not be overly anxious. (To his credit, Wang includes a clip of Anthony Fauci among the first voices stating that masks were not necessary.) But the alarming acceleration of infections in New York in mid-March told a different story.
Like Wuhan, America’s largest city passed overnight after hearing that the virus posed a minimal threat to being locked up, a change elegantly captured in the empty corridors of Grand Central Station and rows of boarded-up stores.
Part of the film’s most moving material is the testimony of US health workers, whose requests for more detailed information and personal protective equipment were met with evasive responses from the CDC, where the official position fluctuated daily. One nurse says she was punished at a hospital for bringing her own masks to work, while others were fired after expressing safety concerns. Emotional interviews convey the lasting effects of trauma and depression.
What is most annoying is the way in which a country supposedly benefiting from freedom of information ended up falling victim to the same type of manipulated data flow that undoubtedly increased the death toll in China. The official number of victims in April was 3,335, but anecdotal evidence collected by Wang and others points to a number possibly ten times higher.
Even more maddening is the filmed footage of protesters in various US cities waving placards that say “The Cure is Killing Us” or “Shut Down the Lockdown” – criticizing mandatory masks as a violation of their freedoms and spreading conspiracy theories about a scam , or a “plandemic” patented by Bill Gates.
The corrosive effects of widespread distrust in the media and medical authorities, and a government with an elastic attitude towards facts and science, are all very evident. Even more so when these images are measured compared to photos of body bags and cardboard coffins stacked in aisles as the US achieves the distinction of the highest infection rate and number of deaths in the world, while Chinese state news points the finger at the America, calling the attention of COVID a failure of democracy.
The parallels, as well as the contrasts, of government deception in both countries are enough to make your head spin as you wish for a makeover, which Wang does when he returns for the first New Year’s Eve and traces a different trajectory. The film ends before the first vaccines are approved, which means it tells a dark story that, hopefully, will soon turn into a more positive corner. But like a damning record of a hellish year, this essential job will only gain value over time. It is a testament to the bravery of the filmmakers, many of whom (cameras, drone photographers, field producers and production assistants) are credited anonymously to protect themselves against retaliation by the Chinese government.
One of the most important questions Wang asks is what we have learned and what safeguards are in place to prevent us from following the same disastrous path in the next global crisis. The answer seems to depend on who is in power and what they have to gain by controlling the narrative.
Location: Sundance Film Festival (premieres)
Producers: Motto Pictures, Little Horse Crossing the River, Little Lantern Company
Distribution: HBO Documentary Films
Director: Nanfu Wang
Producer: Nanfu Wang, Jialing Zhang, Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Carolyn Hepburn
Executive producers: Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller
Directors of Photography: Matt Yu, Michelle Gao, RC Song, K. Yang, Jarred Alterman, Yuanchen Liu, Tom Bergmann, Martina Radwan, Michael Shade, Peter Alton, Rex Miller, Sam Rong, Gil De La Rosa, Paul Szynol
Music: Nathan Halpern
Editors: Nanfu Wang, Michael Shade
99 minutes