READY TO TAKE ON THE FUTURE
76 Days - Review
Most of what we do now is consume media, and it’s nearly all entertainment. Ultimately, there’s not much substance that we can use to grow in the middle of this pandemic, unless of course, we’re watching a documentary about how this virus has affected our lives.
76 Days, directed by Hao Wu, starts on January 23rd of this year and is a fly-on-the-wall look at how healthcare workers in Wuhan, China dealt with the sudden flood of COVID-19 cases.
76 Days starts with a gut punch. The very beginning films a woman wailing to say goodbye to her father one last time, all while his body is being prepped to be sent to the morgue. Healthcare workers are physically holding her back, because the risk of contamination is too high. This one moment highlights the emotional core of the documentary. Countless people are fighting to get into the hospital, families are torn apart by an invisible plague, dementia patients are confused and scared as to why this is all happening to them, all the while the only connection we have with the healthcare workers is their heartbroken eyes as they’re covered in full-body PPE.
The film doesn’t have interviews to break up moments, it’s a constant flow of one haunting scene to the next. Every scene sheds a new light on this catastrophe, but it also shows the quiet moments in hospitals that are as distressing as others. To me, one of the harder scenes to watch is the head nurse just cleaning and packing the patients’ belongings in silence. The ID cards, wallets, and phones with pictures of family on the cover. It’s every person who died in that hospital and their own life, their own struggles, all bound within a couple everyday items. It’s impossible to feel that nuance when all we learn about COVID-19 is an ever-inflating number of deaths on the news.
I’d be remiss not to talk about how this hospital is located in the center of Wuhan, China. At times, you’ll hear people telling each other to buck up, because they’re a member of the Communist Party of China. To Americans, that’s abnormal, yet it makes me glad that this documentary is out there. This virus doesn’t discriminate and neither should we. When across the world people are dying, we need to know their stories no matter how foreign or insignificant the details may seem.
In the end, this isn’t a film you want to see. It’s something, only if you have a beating heart for those who lost their lives to COVID, that you have to see. It’s not the best documentary in the world, you won’t cry every other moment, but you’ll feel connected to someone you’ll never meet. 76 Days reminds us we’re all on the same team, and after everything that’s been going on, we need that sentiment now more than ever.