"76 Days" -- Movie Review

 

This week at MoMA Film, I streamed the documentary “76 Days”, from China.

Synopsis

When the Coronavirus first hit Wuhan, China, the city underwent lockdown for 76 days – and the hospitals were overwhelmed.

Story

On January 23, 2020, the government ordered a lockdown of Wuhan, China – ground Zero for the source of what would come to be known as Covid-19.  The lockdown would turn out to last for a total of 76 days, finally ending on April 8^th of that year.  Almost immediately after the lockdown was announced, hospitals in the area were inundated with patients.  Some were ambulatory, but others were brought by ambulance.  Eventually, ambulances would refuse to take people to hospitals because they were all full to capacity and none of them could accept new patients.  Nearly all of these people had symptoms of Covid-19. 

Despite the fact that the healthcare workers were overworked and stressed, they did their best to care for their patients.  In some cases, it would be something as simple as to hold a hand.  Other times, it would be just listening to them or assisting in telephone calls with family members.  When patients were bedridden and needed assistance in breathing, some nurses would inflate a rubber glove, draw a smiling face on the front and write, “Get Well Soon” on the fingers.  Since all of the doctors and nurses were covered in PPE, the patients couldn’t recognize them; in order to address this, their names would be written on the front and uplifting drawings would be on the back.

One elderly man, a retired fisherman, was particularly agitated and wanted to leave the hospital; when a telephone call was arranged with his son, the son reminded him that because he was a long-time member of the Communist Party, he must set an example and be strong.  The old man’s mental health was deteriorating; it was at this point the son told one of the nurses that his father was on medication for dementia.  Another couple was expecting a baby – the mother had just been diagnosed with Covid-19 and had to have a Caesarian Section in order to give birth.  Their baby, a daughter, spent an extensive amount of time in the NICU while the parents were quarantined; once both the parents and infant wee deemed out of danger, they were finally able to take their newborn daughter home.   

Review

While watching “76 Days”, there is a stark reminder that as much as the United States has suffered from Covid-19, China suffered immensely, too – something that can easily be forgotten considering the fact that the Chinese were blamed for this outbreak and that they have successfully contained the virus where much of the rest of the world has not.  The documentary puts human faces on those in Wuhan who suffered greatly as a result of this virus.  Perhaps the most important take-away from the film is to realize that the fault lays not at the feet of the Chinese people but rather, the Chinese government for their lack of transparency.

The footage we see in this documentary was neither sanctioned nor censored by the Chinese government.  We are witnessing what actually happened with doctors, nurses and patients.  Frustration increases for all of the health care workers moment by moment not only because they are overrun by patients beyond the capacity of their hospital, but also because this is a new virus and they don’t exactly know how it should best be treated.  Both doctors and nurses are covered from head to toe in PPE and it is impossible to recognize any of them. 

Following the documentary, there was a stream of an interview with Hao Wu, the film’s editor and one of its directors.  The interview was almost as illuminating and fascinating as “76 Days” itself.  Wu said that he wound up doing the documentary accidentally – he went to Shanghai right when the lockdown started and began filming when approached by a United States television network; eventually, the network dropped out of the project.  After showing the raw footage to a couple of other filmmakers, he was able to convince them to participate.  Since one of the co-directors had state-approved credentials, he was able to get unfettered access throughout the hospital.