Convergence: Courage in a Crisis

There is a a lot to be said about writers and directors cramming far too many social issues into a 2 hour movie with so many individual people's stories trying to be captured in their entirety while trying to keep the audience interested and engaged in what is classified as a documentary film.

This movie attempted that and unfortunately it failed. A mini series may have worked in order to develop the characters' individual plights without jumping across numerous other characters' stories, countries, LGBTQI+, racism, politics, BLM, refugees, asylum seekers, illegal migrants, citizenship issues, recovered drug addicts, protests, activism ... the list is as long as my forearm. Way too many social topics presented in a rather amateur way for the screen. It's like a YouTuber made this mashup.

It was made even more tedious to watch with the contrived Syrian social media influencer banging his own drum for more exposure and likes whose constant crying was initially believable until he bragged and celebrated about his posts going viral. And another social media pro and driver in China also in it for exposure.

You missed a great opportunity to get this right, Netflix. But you messed it up.

I particularly loved it when Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the guy who concealed the pandemic for China at the beginning, is shown as the voice of reason. Huxley and Orwell would be proud. WHO definitely failed us and these people are trying to convince us they're actually the good guys. Absolute disgrace, the people who made this should be ashamed of themselves and the people who endorse and like this, should realize when they're being made fools.

I could really care less about the accuracy of the scale of deaths depicted in this documentary. It was one really well put together documentary about a time and period in humanity that will go down in history as one of our worst moments. Watching this brought so many different emotions, from feeling captivated, to thrilling, engaging, sad, hopeful, angry. It was incredible. Thank you for making this.

CONVERGENCE is an incredibly ambitious and poignant film that presents a deeply moving mosaic of the global impact of (and response to) COVID-19. The access is incredible: where else can you see the pandemic play out so intimately in a dozen countries all over the world, including Iran, Peru, India, the favelas of Brazil, and Wuhan itself? The achievement of weaving all these stories together is amazing purely on a storytelling basis, as is the power of the various narratives of individual characters, especially the Syrian emigre in London, the ambulance driver in Rio, and the ICU doctor in Peru. The American doctor in Miami could be a feature all by himself. In the end, the film becomes about something much bigger than the pandemic (as if that's not big enough), but rather, the entire spectrum of injustice, oppression, and inequality worldwide, and our interconnectedness in trying to fight it. A staggeringly impressive and inspiring achievement.

Orlando von Einsiedel after releasing this documentary in 2021: "I guess you guys aren't ready for that, yet. But your kids are gonna love it."

Say that not jokingly, because I feel like it's almost too soon to appreciate this as a time capsule, as things are only marginally less scary in 2021 than they are in 2020 (at least in my opinion. Some might feel it's worse).

Future generations, however, will probably find this fascinating as a time capsule that shows how people survived and endured during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even now, it feels like something of a time capsule, but for that, it's interesting.