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76 Days Movie Review

76 Days is a 2020 documentary film directed by Hao Wu. It’s a humanistic, painful look at the pivotal dark moment in recent history.

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“He’s been a Communist Party member for 30 years –

please remind him of that“

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This movie is about the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular focusing on one Wuhan hospital as the doctors and nurses struggle to contain the virus and to treat their patents. This is clearly a loaded topic, but surprisingly the film isn’t political at all. It just offers us a glimpse into what was happening in the hospitals while the geopolitical side is totally disregarded for better and for worse.

There is one moment in the film when one patient mentions having been a loyal member of a Communist party for thirty years, but other than that small moment, the film is very apolitical. With politics aside, I personally wanted a deeper exploration of the pandemic circumstances and what it would mean for the future of the world and this country. The movie is very limited in its approach for better and for worse.

Its fly-on-the-wall approach is very effective at capturing everything that was going on in the hospital in Wuhan in these early days. We get to see how modern, well-equipped and vast Chinese hospitals are while the stuff is mostly very professional and caring.

76 Days doesn’t have clearly identifiable people in its roster, but that is the biggest impact of the movie – the alienation that these masks and equipment create in the human interactions. Seeing all of the special equipment and highly watched over patients and their things was super eerie, especially when you realize that fate would await the rest of the world quickly.

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The documentary is highly humanistic in approach, which pleasantly caught me by surprise. There are some very tender moments between patients and their doctors. Their families aren’t there with them, but the doctors clearly care, which was lovely to witness. I just wish that the pacing and direction were better as the film felt repetitious in its short, but not quite engaging runtime.