Documentaries talk about a chaotic yearExBulletin

Totally under control examines the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Neon

Totally under control examines the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Neon

I doubt I’m alone when I say this has been a blurry year: sometimes I feel like I went to the office or walked out without a mask, and sometimes I feel like forever s ‘has elapsed. Last week I watched two gripping new documentaries that both seem to twist and distort our perception of passing time.

One of them, which is actually called Time, spans more than two decades. The other, titled Totally under control, focuses on the very moment we live in.

Totally under control is the latest documentary from prolific Alex Gibney, who directed it with Suzanne Hillinger and Ophelia Harutyunyan. It’s a cool but damning account of our government’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak that is cramming months of increasingly sinister headlines into two hours.

While it’s as compelling and well documented as you would expect from Gibney, the director of Go clear and Enron: the smartest guys in the room, it might seem redundant to anyone who’s been glued to the news lately. But it’s still encouraging to see the details presented with as much force and measured anger as they are here.

Using socially remote camera setups to keep everyone safe, the filmmakers spoke to reporters, doctors, health experts and government officials. Almost all agree that a deadly airborne virus capable of asymptomatic transmission would always have posed a formidable threat to the United States, but they also agree that it is the President’s relentless minimization of this threat and his disdain for it. science that got us to where we are now. , with a devastated economy and more than 200,000 Americans dead.

The film focuses on several key areas where efforts to combat the virus have failed, starting with technical flaws and bureaucratic blockages, involving the CDC and the FDA, which frustrated early attempts at mass testing. This was followed by a shortage of protective gear for frontline healthcare workers, unaided by the Trump administration’s refusal to intervene on behalf of states. And then, of course, there’s the ongoing national debate over facial covers; a medical supply official who says he voted for Trump in 2016 says he is shocked that wearing a mask during a pandemic could have become so intensely politicized.

The glut of information presented here is dizzying but lucid. We hear about the sidelining of knowledgeable scientists like CDC’s Dr Nancy Messonnier and federal vaccine expert Dr Rick Bright when they tried to sound the alarm. And then there’s the irony that Trump himself tested positive for the virus just a day after this movie ended. That’s how fast the news is these days: even such an urgent documentary, and obviously scheduled for the next election, can’t help but feel already overwhelmed.

Even with its occasional repetitions and oversights, Totally under control grabs me from moment to moment. In a very different way, Time, the first feature documentary directed by Garrett Bradley. It is a co-production between The New York Times and Amazon Studios, and it’s one of the most sublime and beautiful documentaries I’ve seen this year.

At the heart of Time is a black woman named Sibil Fox Richardson, who is called Fox Rich. In 1997, she planned to open a hip-hop clothing store in Shreveport, Louisiana with her husband, Rob. When an investor withdrew, the desperate couple attempted to rob a bank. No one was hurt and no money was stolen. Rich, who was driving the getaway car, got a plea bargain and served three and a half years. Rob was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 60 years.

Rich started shooting videos of herself and their sons so Rob could catch up on all the little moments he had missed: birthdays and graduations, trips to theme parks and pool parties. This added to a treasure trove of home movie footage Rich handed over to Bradley several years ago.

Around the same time, Bradley began filming new footage of Rich, now a successful businesswoman; his now adult children; and her tireless efforts to secure her husband’s release. The result is this sprawling but intensely intimate, black and white chronicle of a couple’s enduring love and a family’s quest for justice for 21 years. In a moving scene, Rich talks about his shattered hopes that Rob would be released in time to see his sons grow up.

Time talks about the cruelty of growing up without a father and growing old without a husband. It is also about the injustice of a prison system that Rich has spent much of the past two decades speaking out against by filing appeals and making phone calls on her husband’s behalf, and giving speeches to the benefit from other people in similar situations.

Without revealing the outcome of the story, I will say that I found it emotionally upsetting the two times I watched the film at Sundance earlier this year, where it won an achievement award, and again at the home last week. It lasts 81 minutes, but at the end of it you feel so connected to the joy and pain of this family that years really seem to have passed. I cherished every moment of this film, because each one replaces so many others that have been lost.