Wuhan Wuhan: Concern Not Cash For Care Triumphs Over The Pandemic

 

It goes without saying that documentary filmmakers with conviction step in as truth tellers where the media fear - or conspire - to tread. Such could not be more true, and timely, as a pressing and corrective screen statement than Yung Chang's Wuhan Wuhan. The Canadian director journeyed to Wuhan, the site of the first massive outbreak of the covid pandemic, to collaborate on this feature with Gong Cheng, a graduate of the People's Liberation Army Academy of Art, joining together their diverse international perspectives for this extraordinary venture.

Strikingly crafted as cinema verite, allowing the film's subjects to speak for themselves, Wuhan Wuhan proceeds into the city's pandemic stricken corridors to pursue a story with no predetermined ending - and more about crisis in progress than conclusion. Which deftly lends an element as well of dramatic suspense towards the unknown - which in hindsight has been victorious - a rare accomplishment in documentaries.

But of likewise astonishing note, is China's collective cultural contrast when it comes to health care. The sick simply walk into a hospital to receive treatment - no interrogations about acceptable insurance or paying for exorbitant procedures - which in this country leads many too fearful to seek critical help for the virus or any number of conditions, and instead hoping to get better at home but dying there instead. And with one patient casually announcing something never heard here in medical settings "I know the government cares about us."

Yet another surprising observation, is the sighting of psychologists, essential components of the medical teams making the rounds of the covid wards. And one inquiring of the patients - does anyone need therapy, maybe for anxiety or insomnia. Or just being sad. "You don't have to ask me. Everyone here needs therapy, including me."

 

Prairie Miller