Totally Under Control, its title a tongue in cheek reference to President Trump’s repeated declarations regarding his administration’s clear-as-day chaotic response to our cataclysmic health crisis, is (one of) the latest from the US’s most ADD prolific documentarian, Alex Gibney. It’s a film the Oscar and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker – along with his co-directors/producers/conspirators Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger – made in secret in a mad dash of five months, in a race to get it in the can and out to the American public prior to the November presidential election. Whether it will change any voter’s mind – let alone get in front of the eyes of any Fox News cult follower – is dubious. What it will do, and has done already, is allow the left-leaning liberal viewership (and I count myself in that camp) to feel equal parts enraged and vindicated. It’s a primal scream catharsis. Yes, the f*ckup was as bad as we feared. And much much worse.
Perhaps more importantly, Totally Under Control is also a record for history, a real-time lesson for future generations in easily digestible cinematic form. Gibney is at his most comfortable in the role of anti-corruption activist, exposing shenanigans within corporations (starting with his first Academy Award-nominated doc, 2005’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and continuing right through to 2019’s The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley); religion (the Emmy Award-winning Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief in 2015 and Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God in 2013); and, of course, governments (2007’s Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side and last year’s Citizen K). Indeed, I’ve long complained that Gibney’s zealous dedication to his subjects often comes at the expense of artistic consistency – and Totally Under Control does suffer from its speedy production schedule. And yet it simultaneously manages to surprise.
The premise of the film lies in the Woodward and Bernstein reminiscent question of what did the president know about the pandemic, when did he know it, and what did his administration do (and crucially, not do) about it. For answers, Gibney and his team turn to an all-star lineup of talking heads, government scientists (some who even managed to hang on when Trump came to power), and public health experts who were on the frontlines before the rest of us even knew there were frontlines. And because filming occurred during our current stay-at-home moment – i.e., the co-directors were unable to shoot interviews in person – the crew got innovative, crafting an Interrotron-esque camera that allowed them to seamlessly connect Zoom-style. Which also neatly served to put the pandemic front and center in the filmmaking process itself.
Contrasts
And by contrasting this US case study with those who experienced South Korea’s non-botched coronavirus response firsthand – from doctors to journalists – a damning picture emerges. While we in the US have all seen the footage of overflowing hospitals and White House press conference lies – of which Totally Under Control makes liberal use of – some of what the team uncovers is, well, maddening and horrifying. For example, the Trump administration not only tossed out its predecessor’s pandemic playbook (thank you, tell-all book author, John Bolton) but even disregarded its own 2019 pandemic simulation exercise! And while the CDC (headed by a guy who once advocated abstinence as the cure for the AIDS crisis) screwed up its initial testing, and then compounded the problem by sitting on its hands for nearly a month (which was fine by Trump since the less community transmission spotted the lower the numbers – also the reason he gave for keeping passengers on a coronavirus-infected cruise liner from coming ashore).
Meanwhile, state governors were forced to bid on ventilators and personal protective equipment a la eBay (though California Governor Gavin Newsom did finally get a break on testing supplies once he’d agreed to publicly thank President Trump) – against not only one another but also against the federal government itself (FEMA in turn quickly sent its winning bounty to a handful of haphazardly selected private corporations). Oh, and the reason for that lack of PPE in the first place? Trump officials had sold off most of the mask supply to China back in February. Ka-ching.
Mircale cures
Of course, Trump was always more concerned with touting a miracle cure – or rather the magical thinking drug hydroxychloroquine – which he learned about via a social media post from a Hasidic doctor in rural Orange County, New York (you can’t make this shit up). As of this writing that county’s health commissioner continues to crack down on the doctor’s super-spreading Kiryas Joel community and Trump, well, we know how well that hydroxychloroquine regimen worked out for him.
by contrasting this US case study with those who experienced South Korea’s non-botched coronavirus response firsthand – from doctors to journalists – a damning picture emerges.
Then there are the dueling-for-dumbness-award task forces. The coronavirus task force, led by the climate change-skeptical, evangelical Vice President Mike Pence, was, unsurprisingly, heavy on political hacks and industry reps, with a smattering of scientists thrown in for optics. More of a jaw-dropper, though, was the parallel PPE task force, run by Trump’s son-in-law/Swiss Army knife of policy Jared Kushner, which consisted almost exclusively of Kushner’s friends and friends of friends – at least those willing to work seven days a week for no money (i.e., tech bros in their 20s). This brain trust not only lacked an iota of applicable skills or training but also had no contact whatsoever with any of the government officials supposedly in charge. Then again, it’s hard to see what difference that might have made. For if there’s one overarching theme to Totally Under Control it’s that egotism and incompetence make for a deadly combo. No matter if you’re red or blue.
