I've seen a lot of disaster movies, especially since the pandemic uprooted our lives, and I've always been bemused that the first instinct of authorities is to avoid a panic. Always, this means lying to the public regarding the impending doom. The public's ignorance, then, leads to their being unprepared for the disaster, of which the only thing standing in the way is luck and competent governance. Leave it to Hollywood, I suppose, to think up something that ridiculously paternalistic and self-defeating. Or, I don't know, maybe it's too much to consider that what is good governance is an informed public and authorities that don't egregiously lie--just pathological hoodwinking and concerted campaigns of misinformation every spiteful word out of their mouths. To that end, "Totally Under Control" compares the pandemic response of South Korea, with their tens of thousands of confirmed cases and hundreds of confirmed deaths related to COVID-19, as of this writing, to that of the United States, with millions of such cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Even though the American population is over six times that of Korea, the numbers are striking, but not surprising--certainly not after reviewing this two-hours summation of an utter abdication of governing over the past year, if not the past four. This documentary being released a few weeks before the country's presidential election was, of course, intentional. Good.
I appreciate well-executed dramatic irony in fiction, which might help explain why I dislike characters stealing it from me when they keep what is a minor role in these movies, of the public, in the dark to avoid panic. "Totally Under Control" reverses, doubles and redoubles this irony. Now, we know how this movie ends, so we begin by viewing interviews of experts and key figures, news footage and narration setting the stage of when we didn't know. At first, the doctors knew what the public didn't, but eventually we learned, too. But, the strangest thing is that the lead, along with some of his main supporting cast, continues the irony by appearing to know nothing. He calls it a Democratic "hoax" and blames the disaster of the response on blue states, but pretends to have the virus "totally under control," all the while overseeing bureaucratic ineptitude and a breakdown of supply chains for personal protective equipment, making masks an issue of politics, as well as of availability, while hocking snake oil, muzzling scientists and organizational experts in favor of promoting political hacks. And the surprise twist, by way of Bob Woodward interview, is that he knew how bad the virus was the whole time, but he still gets infected, anyways. It's not that he didn't know; it's that he didn't care. It would make for dramatic fiction, but as our depressing reality, it's truly horrifying.
Standard expositional narration and talking heads nonetheless, this is a well-constructed documentary, too. Hardly every bit of mismanagement known is covered in the concise overview of the past months' news stories, let alone what one might wonder will date the movie with any future revelations. For one, I assume there will come a time when the pool of prominent interview subjects will be larger due to subsiding fears over job security, let alone the limitations otherwise imposed by a pandemic and without some distance from the subject. I especially appreciate the reflexive nature of the views of the socially-distanced and plastic-wrapped camera set-ups for the interviews--and at least one that is delivered to the interviewee. The world isn't normal, so why would the filmmaking be, either. It's this, of a documentary about the pandemic made during it, that will continue to set it apart.
One matter I take some issue with, however, is the attempt at something of a positive note: that we may learn from this trauma. Indeed, part of South Korea's more-effective response may be attributed to their recent experience with contagion, such as the MERS outbreak in 2015, and maybe the world over will perform better if such viruses and pandemics do become ever more prevalent, although that's not an optimistic view, either. But, the documentary also brings up the most recent and relevant global catastrophe to our current situation, the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Unfortunately, even though I like to think I appreciate history, I knew very little before 2020 about the so-called "Spanish flu," or the forgotten pandemic, as others aptly put it. Of late, however, my research has included silent films from that era, and if not forgotten, it was either largely neglected or lost--as most silent films are now. All of which is to say that I'm not going to get my hopes up for two weeks that we've learned our lesson, so to speak, let alone remembering any lesson over another century after a pandemic. Hopefully, the final irony won't be that we know more now than we know in the future, but this is a good start--primary sourcing that may serve as a record for years and generations to come.
