With careful craftsmanship, director Nanfu Wang delivers a solid piece of in-depth factual reportage and an important piece of testimony. In The Same Breath is an eye-opening, wrenching documentary depicting the human cost of the coronavirus outbreak’s mismanagement and celebrating the individuals who risk their lives for others and for the truth.
The 2021 Sundance Film Festival has opened yesterday in Park City, Utah and online. As part of the Premieres Section of the festival, we have attended the World Premiere of In The Same Breath.
What an interesting time, one year after the announcement of the lockdown in the Chinese city of Wuhan and as the surge of new variants is threatening a growing number of countries, for a documentary looking back at the early days of the pandemic.
The film opening sequence epitomizes the duality shown throughout the film. With bitter irony, Director Nanfu Wang offers us footage of the impressive light show organized as part of the 2020 New Year celebrations in Wuhan. As announced by Xi Jinping on this day, 2020 was about to become a “landmark year”. Yet, at the same time, the media touched upon the fact that eight scientists had been punished for spreading rumors about an unknown pneumonia.
In In The Same Breath, Director Nanfu Wang sheds a much-needed light on the actual conditions of the coronavirus outbreak in China and denounces the mismanagement, censorship and lies of the Chinese government. By expertly piecing together footage and data scrapped on social media and collected by local filmmakers, the director manages at first to rewrite the narrative about the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. We are indeed exposed to testimonials and pieces of evidence revealing that the first case of this new pneumonia was observed in Wuhan as early as December 1st, 2019. By the end of December, some scientists warned the local authorities after identifying a new form of coronavirus. They were the scientists punished for spreading rumors as all the mainstream media put it on the first day of 2020.
The film is probably at its most startling in showing how those whistleblowers were neglected and hushed by the Chinese government. In one scene, the film proposes a montage of excerpts from a surveillance camera placed in a private clinic located next to the Seafood Market of Wuhan. On those images dating from December of 2019, one can see an impressive number of patients complaining about symptoms such as breathing difficulties. What is more, as she teamed up with local filmmakers, director Nanfu Wang suggested some of her collaborators to place hidden cameras in Wuhan hospitals. This fly-on-the-wall approach revealed that numerous patients were already suffering and dying to the new coronavirus in December of 2019. Even more maddening is the juxtaposition, a few weeks later, of personal stories of people who experienced severe traumatism after losing their relatives to a disease “worse than cancer” in a Chinese man’s words, and the government’s communication which kept reassuring the public that “there [was] no evidence of human-to-human transmission” on January 3rd, while putting pressure on medical staff not to disclose any secret. At this time, the new coronavirus was already spreading among patients and doctors in hospitals. The film is indeed at its best when highlighting the discrepancy between the official communication and the real stories of Chinese citizens.
“When the government tells us where to look, they are also telling us where not to look.”
The director methodically builds an indictment of the government and Party officials by denouncing the fact that only on January 20th, 2020, after the end of the 2-week Annual’s People Congress, the human-to-human transmission of the virus was finally acknowledged by the government, which led, three days later to the implementation of the lockdown in Wuhan. But it was already too late. Hospitals were at capacity and a growing number of people could not get taken care of. One man says he lined up for 8 days in front of a hospital to finally be denied a bed for his wife. On this aspect, the film is crude and brutal in showing multiple stories of people unable to deal with a dying relative, due to hospitals’ saturation. In the meantime, TV reports and documentaries are celebrating the “Angels in white” and praising the resilience, courage and strength of the Chinese health system. “When the government tells us where to look, they are also telling us where not to look” says Director Nanfu Wang who demonstrates that the government’s communication aims at not allowing foreign media to criticize their crisis management and ultimately their regime. As confirmed by a police officer caught on camera, “the foreign media act like sharks; if they see a drop of blood, they eat you”.
In The Same Breath proves to be a solid piece of in-depth factual reportage which constantly attempts at undermining the government’s communication and narrative by showing devastating footage of people dying without any assistance, at home, in a hospital lobby or in the street.
After establishing the link between the government mismanagement and lies, and the dramatic human toll in China, Nanfu Wang turns her attention to the United States.
The director charts the spread of the virus among the American population and proves powerless in front of the repetition the same mistakes that she had been highlighting in China. What is most infuriating at this point in the film is to witness that the exact same mistakes are being repeated. The threat is downplayed by the leaders and viewed as a “very low threat”, even in Dr. Fauci’s words on March 8th, 2020 when he maintained that “there is no reason to be walking around with a mask”. Soon after, the number of cases plummeted in the country and lockdowns were decided. The film is gripping and the filmmaker’s despair is palpable as she notices that sanitary measures ended up taken not based on science but on supplies. A large number of nurses were even fired by their hospitals for complaining about the lack of means they had to treat the patients.
Central to the film is the tribute that the filmmaker pays to the healthcare workers, surrounded by chaos, both in China and in the United States, as well as to the families who experienced losses. The film manages to get us to consider the death toll of the pandemic no longer as daily numbers but rather as the sum of individual tragedies.
Over the course of the film, the director also denounces the Chinese government which praises itself for defeating the virus and protecting its people, celebrating the city of Wuhan as a “city of heroes” in a “strong China”. Again, each time the director show the government’s communication, she then undermines this narrative by giving a voice to more and more citizens whose experience is the polar opposite of this myth.
The director delivers a crushing punch in the final sequence by imagining a fictionalized situation in which the Chinese government would have warned the rest of the world of a new coronavirus threat on January 1st 2020 instead of “punishing” the whistleblowers for spreading false rumors. This scene seems simple and may sound naïve but helps the director delivers her final pessimistic message.
Indeed, one walks away from the film feeling worried about the prevalence of the conditions which led to the current global pandemic we have been experiencing for nearly a year: a lack of transparency from the authorities, a mistrust towards our leaders and, in China, a constant threat towards the ones who denounce the government’s actions – or inactions.
Finally, the film is fascinating in itself. US-based Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang has entirely shot In The Same Breath remotely, working with local filmmakers who agreed to take substantial risks to document and offer an unfiltered access to the truth, in the hope that lessons finally get learned.
With careful craftsmanship, director Nanfu Wang delivers a solid piece of in-depth factual reportage and an important piece of testimony. In The Same Breath is an eye-opening, wrenching documentary depicting the human cost of the coronavirus outbreak’s mismanagement and celebrating the individuals who risk their lives for others and for the truth.
