Mark Reviews Movies: TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 12, 2020

The government and, more specifically, the sitting President of the United States failed completely, utterly, and fatally in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It's a point that keeps needing to be made, especially as so many people—including officials in the government and, again, the President specifically—are currently trying to downplay the severity of the disease that has, as of this writing, led to the deaths of 215,000 people in the United States. If you're not infuriated by these facts, you either haven't been paying attention or are willfully ignorant of what has happened and is still happening.

In the midst of this ongoing threat, directors Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger have made Totally Under Control, a detailed, if not entirely comprehensive, account of the failings of the current administration in its response to the global pandemic. It's not entirely the filmmakers' fault that some key information or vital flaws in the government's response aren't addressed here. After all, they were working with something of a deadline (obviously attempting to have the film prepared for release before the upcoming election), and the breadth and degree of the failure to appropriately respond to the pandemic would take much more than a mere two hours to fully explore.

The fact that Donald Trump, the President who seemed and still seems to go out of his way to undermine the gravity of this situation, contracted COVID-19 is a postscript here, since it happened the day after the film was completed. As for how he's currently using his infection and apparent recovery to further downplay the danger and effects of the disease, that'll be for another day (Indeed, this review may come up short in terms of up-to-date information about this fact shortly after or even before it's published). Hopefully, people will watch this documentary and see Trump's response as just another fulfillment of a months-long and still continuing pattern.

Patterns are the filmmakers' focus in this film. The main ones from the administration include misinformation, clandestine cover-ups (only revealed by whistleblowers—one of whom appears on-camera here with his name and face in full view), the faulty logic of running government like a business, looking for political opportunities (even if it's at the cost of people dying), and, most importantly, downplaying the disease and its spread for a variety of reasons.

Gibney, Harutyunyan, and Hillinger mostly approach this story chronologically, with a handy calendar at the bottom of the screen for us to keep track of when someone said something or something was done. They go back, too, whenever one statement or action seems to contradict another, such as the film's final revelation—now old and seemingly forgotten news—that Trump was fully aware of the deadly and pernicious nature of COVID-19 at least as early as the beginning of February. That news is now just a month old, so yes, the film is pretty up-to-date. Think, though, of how much has happened since then, and it's pretty clear how no documentary made in the middle of this crisis—no matter how detailed it may—possibly could examine the full story.

The filmmakers have made a valiant and vigorous effort, though, and when all of this is finally behind us, we'll hopefully be able to look at this film with a bit more rational clarity. Watching it now, it's too maddening to see the government's patterns laid so bare, while currently seeing those patterns repeat themselves with every new development.

That emotional response is on the viewer, though. The filmmakers and the interview subjects (rather ingeniously filmed using a combination of remote teleconferencing—using a device safely delivered to each one's home—and a cinematographer shielded by some form of plastic tarp, including a shower curtain in one instance) are calm, reasoned, and primarily concerned with the facts.

They include former government officials, either under this administration or the previous one, and experts (a mathematician explains how, early into the looming crisis, she created a predictive model—using information from the epicenter of the disease in Wuhan, China, and a cruise ship that was forced to dock in Japan after an outbreak—that turned out to be frighteningly accurate). There are also scientists (who explain how the political machine got in the way of the necessary steps to create a usable test) and one frontline doctor, whose experience reflects how this disease has affected minority communities in such staggeringly inequitable ways.

While the United States government's response repeatedly comes up short and fails for political reasons and economic concerns, Gibney, Harutyunyan, and Hillinger juxtapose this country's actions—and inactions—with those in South Korea. That country was prepared ahead of time (The United States was not, and as much as Trump and his cronies blame the previous administration, they had more than three years to make up for any real or perceived shortcomings left to them) and quickly responded with measures that have become disastrously political issues in the United States (stay-at-home orders, social distancing, contact tracing, and, as we've learned after some initial uncertainty, the wearing of masks).

Such measures have worked there (Fewer than 500 people have died of the disease). In the United States, though, under an administration that sees economic success as the only means for re-election, there was no political or personal profit to be made in protecting the health and lives of its citizenry.

Totally Under Control makes the point clear: We could have done better in the United States. We still could be doing better. We're not going to, either now or in the future, as long as we have these government officials and politicians, who put their own desires over the needs of the people they serve.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products