Hot Docs 2021: In the Same Breath

The documentary In the Same Breath is a useful entry point to criticisms of government propaganda and management of information during the COVID-19 pandemic, even if it’s not as revelatory or incisive as I had hoped. The title alludes to the hypocrisy and doublespeak of governments, messaging different things to different audiences all in the same breath, as well as to our common humanity, breathing the same air and therefore sharing fears of airborne contagion.

The single most powerful part of the documentary is the recurring attention it brings to a news statement that went out across Chinese state media on the afternoon of January 1, 2020: “On January 1st, Wuhan Police made an announcement. Eight people were punished for spreading rumours about an unknown pneumonia.” Director-narrator Nanfu Wang (One Child Nation) describes how this message quickly faded in the public’s attention, but later revived in her memory as events turned worse in Wuhan later in January. I found this hook engaging, since many of my experiences in the days between March 11 and 17, 2020, when everything rapidly escalated in Canada, have remained fixed in my memory. The film’s use of the news statement illustrates Wang’s approach—exploring larger national and international events through a personal lens—as well as the film’s interest in showing not only what happened in Wuhan, but also in contrasting her investigative revelations with Chinese state propaganda.

Given the current ideologies of our culture, in which a work’s ethos—which is to say the character, expertise, and identity of the speaker—typically determines legitimacy to speak, it’s useful that In the Same Breath is narrated and largely shaped around the experiences and investigations of a Chinese documentarian residing in the US. It allows her to make the kinds of parallels the film wants to make. Wang tells us that she’s lived in the US for nine years, but that she returns home each year to celebrate the Lunar New Year with her family in a remote village in China. She went back to China in 2020, and then left her young son with her mother when she had to return for work to America, only to have Wuhan lockdown while she was away from her son.

It must have been an arduous separation for a parent (her husband went back to get their son), but it seems to have also galvanized Wang’s investigations into what was actually going on in Wuhan. For example, early on, she hires three photojournalists to record happenings in Wuhan, as she distrusts the official reports coming from state-run media. Wang’s online research at the time as well as later investigations expose not only an overwhelmed medical system but also hospitals turning away COVID-19 patients before the coronavirus had even been officially admitted to. The film suggests that Chinese authorities knew something was going on long before mid-January and that they have subsequently suppressed the real number of total deaths in Hubei province. I would have liked to see Wang dig a bit more into these timelines and their implications and, most of all, put them in a clear chronology for the audience, but it’s nevertheless important documentation.

Wang commendably brings attention to the malfeasance of the CCP government in China in suppressing information at the beginning of the outbreak in Wuhan, but the film also underscores early problems in the US handling. Refreshingly, Wang’s concern isn’t to attach all criticism of the US handling to the presidency of Donald J. Trump. For instance, the film reminds us that Dr. Anthony Fauci said masks weren’t necessary in March, only days before everything shut down. However, on the US front, Wang places most of her attention on interviewing three nurses impacted by speaking out about what they saw going wrong, much of it around the dire lack of PPE and the alleged use of disinformation to control supplies. At one point, one of the nurses shouts during a protest: “This is the reflection of a broken system” and Wang cuts to someone in the crowd holding an image of the Wuhan doctor, Li Wenliang, who died after warning the world about a SARS-like virus in December 2019. We are invited to compare the two systems. 

It’s worth pointing out that the film isn’t arguing that China is the enemy, but neither is it saying the US government or Trump administration are just as bad as the CCP. One of the repeated tactics taken against whistleblowers in China, the film shows, is to shame them for making China look bad to the rest of the world, especially the US. Perhaps in response, Wang does take care to distinguish her patriotism for China from her criticism of the government, institutions, and Party. 

In the Same Breath concludes that governments around the globe should have shown more transparency and been forthright about the necessary strong measures needed to stop the virus. The conclusion struck me as incredibly basic, and something most people would probably agree without seeing the movie. Furthermore, maintaining that we should have worn masks a few weeks or months earlier doesn’t seem to answer the scale of the dysfunctions uncovered. For instance, when one father in Wuhan says his son got the virus in a hospital in mid-December, the implications of that revelation are only touched on, when they seem to me to be at the heart of the most pressing issues. She also conspicuously steers clear of addressing the ambiguous origins of the virus (was it from the lab?), which seems bound up with the whole issue of government transparency.

It’s clear that In the Same Breath is neither a furious movie, nor a work of polemic. Wang remains soft spoken even in critique. The film’s reserve is both a positive quality in comparison to the many preachy, single-minded, and angry documentaries out there, but, in my mind, the most damning conclusions and intriguing questions of Wang’s investigations are mentioned in the narration and soon passed over, while the overarching “message” remains pretty pat. There’s a nuance in some of the revelations and comparisons that doesn’t come across in the prominent conclusions.

In the Same Breath is nevertheless a valuable primer on the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, particularly in Wuhan and, to a more limited extent, the US. I think many people, especially those chiefly informed by the corporate media in North America, would benefit from watching it, since it will bring attention to issues beyond the talking points of public health representatives and politicians and the narratives of our dominant media institutions.

7 out of 10

In the Same Breath (USA)

Directed by Nanfu Wang.

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