‘Wuhan is like hell right now” – A Glimpse Into 2020’s ‘Invisible Enemy’

From Journeyman Pictures comes Coronavirus: The Contagion Gripping the World, an informative but appropriately troubling documentary on the origins and spread of the coronavirus. Although mainly told through the lens of Australian expats living in China, the film avoids some of the usual Western-perspective pitfalls, making use of local experts and, perhaps most disturbingly of all, amateur videos from inside Wuhan, the site of the original outbreak. Despite their expected shock-value, it’s still hard to prepare for the level of human trauma on display in some of the alarmingly candid footage revealed.

From the outset, the documentary does not attempt to demonise Wuhan, or indeed all of China, as an unclean or filthy place – an orientalist analysis all too common in the media landscape. Rather, it briefly explores Wuhan as a university city and bustling metropolis, a real place, not just a scare-word. Having said this, the film predictably descends into the sinister, with footage emphasising the eeriness of Chinese ghost towns, the scandal of police raids on self-quarantines and the dystopian imagery of masked authorities spraying down doorways with disinfectant. Confusion and panic sets the pace of the narrative, which increasingly appears to run away from the political reality of the Chinese state.

What becomes immediately apparent is how the coronavirus was a fortune of circumstance. Firstly through its inception just before the Lunar New Year, which meant thousands of people, many affected but showing little symptoms, travelled across China and the world to celebrate, increasing the spread and the chance of the virus being kept alive. Secondly, the Chinese government’s inefficiency in responding to the immediate threat wasted around two to three crucial weeks at the beginning - denying the scale and existence of the crisis at great peril.

The Chinese state’s reaction to the virus is a running theme throughout. In a particularly dramatic turn, one of the doctors who discovered the coronavirus and warned about its potential deadliness falls victim himself. The Chinese peoples’ outpouring of grief, anger and frustration at their government for demonising Li Wenliang when he originally identified the virus even turned him into something of a martyr – ‘suppressed for telling the truth’.

Despite the damning fact that Wuhan officials did originally withhold information about the virus, the film cautions blaming the whole catastrophe on mismanagement by exploring a multitude of factors, which of course were compounded by issues of governance. On the other hand, once support actually kicked in, the speed with which China built new hospitals to cope with the situation is certainly noteworthy.

Though the subject is undeniably heavy, the documentary’s style is not particularly impressive or memorable as it is a victim of the immediacy of the crisis – trying not to present itself as a dispassionate news report but veering wildly into that territory when the experts are interviewed. The underlying soundtrack is horror movie-esque, creeping musical notes reminiscent of apocalyptic end-of-days scenarios. This, along with some unfortunate zombie-like graphics, is not the best fit for an otherwise sobering documentary.

At one point, an interviewee does outright state, ‘Wuhan is like hell right now’ – so it makes sense to cultivate this idea for the sake of infotainment. Though not the highest production value, the documentary’s few experts and distressing footage from China is enough to scare you just that little bit more if you weren’t already on edge about this hidden enemy.

The film ultimately gives an informative timeline to the coronavirus, though having come out in February 2020 and given how fast it is now spreading, it borders on being out-of-date as of March. The danger of an unknown virus in an era of globalisation is an increasingly urgent task facing a polarised populace. This documentary alternates between overblown dramatism and revealing insights into the gravity of the current situation facing us today.

When one sees undercover footage of distraught doctors and patients screaming in agony, it is suddenly clear we are living in the overdramatic, with the scariest part being the unknown; what is to come next?

An exaggerated threat or a horrifying normalcy, this is now our reality.