Oh Cinema: Films for the Trump Years, Part 19: Totally Under Control

At the moment I write this, total confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US have surpassed 8.5 million, with over 220,000 dead. Both numbers, almost certainly undercounts, are set to increase even more in the coming weeks and months, as the latest numbers indicate that much of the US is about to experience a third wave of infection. By every conceivable metric, both in raw numbers and in rates of infection and death, the United States is far and away the worst-affected nation on Earth from the pandemic to date. The only countries that are anywhere close to matching the US in their failure to contain the virus, places like India, Brazil, or Russia, are not world-leading economies or global superpowers, but rather nations that are far poorer, less developed, or suffering under their own forms of tinpot autocracy or populist nationalism. In the most terrible of ways, the United States stands entirely alone.

And it was all a choice.

We can't afford to let ourselves be distracted from this simple fact; what we have spent the past year collectively witnessing is nothing less than the greatest domestic failure of a single administration in the history of the United States. Things like slavery, Native American genocide, and systematic racial and religious discrimination are obviously far deeper ingrained in American society, but these are generational sins that centuries of Americans of every political or religious affiliation bear responsibility for. Singular catastrophes like the Great Depression and the Secession Crisis and subsequent Civil War were aggravated by the actions or inactions of individual Presidents, but the causes of both ran far too deep to be laid on the solitary shoulders of James Buchanan or Herbert Hoover.

No, COVID pandemic is on another plane entirely. Never before has a travesty on this scale occurred in the United States; where an entire political party, both at the federal level and in the states where it holds power, has so thoroughly and completely given up on taking any measures to protect any of its citizens from a specific threat. The entire country has been laid open for the virus to ravage when and where it can. And even though marginalized communities are obviously hit the hardest by this, no one can truly escape it. We will all bear the consequences of this failure for decades, and in many cases, lifetimes.

As great as the dangers of the coronavirus are, we have learned enough to know that it is not some instoppable, immutable Black Death; we have the knowledge and the technology and, especially in the US, the money and resources to limit its damage. The weight of a pandemic would be a hard fight with real costs no matter what, but we have seen where and how sound government was able to stave off the worst. At no point did it have to be this way. The horror stories of hospitals overwhelmed, with doctors and nurses suffering PTSD from having to work punishing, life-threatening shifts and holding phones out to dying patients so that they can at least talk to, if not see, their families. The economic devastation of industries and stores and jobs being abandoned with absolutely no safety net big enough to save our poorest from deprivation and suffering. The lives that are now lost forever, surviving families and friends scarred and traumatized by sudden death. The survivors, who may very well suffer a lifetime of after-effects, all of which will cost money to treat, limit their ability to work and live and enjoy life, and who will carry all the pschological effects that this entails. The simple ability to enjoy a hug with someone you care about it, gone for the forseeable future.

All of it was a choice.

The fact that this is all still ongoing, and will heavily affect our daily lives for some time, means that there are still so many horrors we will have to endure and so many terrible truths left to be uncovered. But what counts the most, we already know; President Trump, Vice President Pence, and all of the most important leading figures within the Republican Party knew, almost from the start, that this disease was a serious threat that would harm lives. And they chose to not only do nothing to prepare, they have continued to actively oppose and hinder any form of effective, unified response to the virus. At the end of the day, nothing else matters. Nothing else we learn can alter or excuse this utterly heinous and evil dereliction of duty.

And thanks to directors Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger, we already have a first effort to capture at least some sense of the scale of this disaster. It's taken until Part 19, but this series now officially features a film literally made for and about the Trump years. Made under unique circumstances (the film touches a little bit on the technical challenges of filming under COVID and how the crew worked around them), the movie is primarily a collection of direct interviews with doctors and officials of various stripes that were involved in either federal or private efforts to track the spread of the disease and coordinate a response to it.

As such, it's not a film that tries anything adventerous in its filmmaking or narration. It is barebones and straightforward and laser-focused on presenting a clear timeline of much of 2020 to date, tracking when what was known and the first key moments where the best chances at containment within the United States were irrevocably mishandled or ignored. It is one of the year's most infuriating and essential films.

Perhaps what made me the angriest watching this film was to reflect on how, even after all this, so many of us still haven't learned a damn thing. That it took a tragedy of this magnitude to throw Trump off what so many assumed would be a waltz to reelection is sickening enough, but even after a quarter of a million dead, he will still get at least 40% percent of the vote in next week's election no matter what. I've been referring to the GOP and all of American conservatism as a death cult for some time now (and have taken some flak for it), but even I am utterly flabbergasted at just how enthusiastically so much of the country has leaned in to it.

The film throws in a single credit right at the end mentioning that Trump tested positive for COVID mere days after they finished production, an almost ironic admission on the part of the filmmakers that events have long ago outstripped their capacity to convey the entirety of this mess within a single film. Honestly, no one book or movie or show can bear such a weight on its own. But this movie is a start. It is a first, significant public record of the greatest failure of government in American history, a warning of what is to come if we don't salvage and fix what is left in time to address other, even bigger challenges looming ahead like climate change.

Hundreds of thousands have died. Millions have gotten sick. Tens of millions of lives have been irrevocably thrown off course and out of balance in the fallout. And it was all a deliberate, conscious choice, made collectively by the Republican Party.

I will never forget it. I will never forgive it. And neither should you.

-Noah Franc

Previously on Films for the Trump Years:

Part 1- Selma

Part 2- Good Night, and Good Luck

Part 3- 13^th

Part 4- Get Out

Part 5- Chasing Ice/Chasing Coral

Part 6- The Big Short

Part 7- Human Flow

Part 8- Moonlight/Winter's Bone

Part 9- Black Panther