UNSEEN ALLY

In early April, CNN FILMS, SIERRA/TANGO PRODUCTIONS & VULCAN PRODUCTIONS have presented a new documentary,  Unseen Enemy, devoted to emerging epidemics. Co-produced with WESTDEUTSCHER RUNDFUNK KÖLN in collaboration with ARTE, the movie is directed by Janet Tobias, an Emmy-Award winning filmmaker with parallel careers in film television and medicine. Jenny worked as a producer at ABC News’ Prime Time and as the editorial producer for ABC’s legal and criminal justice coverage. Later, she worked as a national producer at Dateline NBC. In 2001, she created her own television-film production company,  which has produced several documentaries on medical and social issues. In the while, Janet has become adjunct assistant professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and research professor of Global Public Health at NYU.

In 2012 Unseen Enemy  was initially thought as a documentary about the threat of epidemics in the 21st century. Almost by hazard, it happened that the production team was filming at the same location of the first recorded outbreak of Ebola.  The documentary crew found themselves involved in a real epidemics and soon the film turned into a running commentary of an actual epidemic. Two years later, the Unseen Enemyteam decided  to give a further running commentary of another emerging epidemic, Zika. They went to Brazil to document the outbreak from inside, collecting stories, tragedies, acts of bravery, altruism and dedication. Unseen Enemy has been already broadcasted  in Estonia, Venezuela, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Israel, Poland; it is still available on CNN.com/go until May 8th; and it will be available on Video on Demand and DVD in the coming months.  

Unseen Enemy is very well done. Never boring, well directed and photographed, with a good pace, and extreme attention to details, the film offers stunningly intimate observations on the two outbreaks and tells vital human stories. A special mention goes to the original soundtrack, written by John Piscitello an American composer who wrote - inter alia - the soundtrack to No Place on Earth, the story of Jewish families in the western Ukraine who lived over 500 days in caves, coming out into the light only when the German army had been driven from the Ukraine, and to  Dinner with the Alchemist, a dark movie, where “a spider-web of lives come clashing together as Old New Orleans is plagued by mysterious deaths”. Piscitello’s music is not only vital to Unseen Enemy - catching the attention from the very beginning, and maintaining the tension through the whole film – but it is the actual soul of the movie and the key for understanding it.

 

The Unseen Enemy’s model is the gothic movie and music is essential to create that atmosphere. As in a well done gothic film, the public is progressively driven towards the uncanny sensation that the game is not over with the apparent happy end. It isn’t done, it just won't go away.   All music pieces in the soundtrack can't resolve themselves (listen, for instance, to “Outbreaks Everywhere”, the piece that opens the movie) any more than outbreaks are truly defeated.   The last music piece, “What the Future Holds”, is a sad whimper, which goes out slowly and ends with a silence of death. Epidemics can be stopped but never definitely beat; at the very end, notwithstanding human heroism, they will prevail,  this is the depressing message implicitly conveyed by Unseen Enemy.

In conclusion, this documentary leads to a commentary and brings to one big question. The commentary is that Janet Tobias has unquestionably found the right way to speak of infectious outbreaks, without lecturing the public  or resorting to sappy, educational, tales. Maybe she exploits too much the war rhetoric to describe the fight against Ebola and Zika, yet this can be still understandable. 

The big question is whether it can be ever acceptable to create a catching atmosphere by giving the implicit (and consequently more pervasive) message that, soon or later, we will be killed by a deadly epidemic. This message is not only discouraging, but it is also misleading. Our goal is rarely to eradicate infectious diseases. Apart from very few infections, our scope is to control infections. Microbes existed well before humans appeared on the surface of the earth, and they will exist well after our species will be disappeared. We should learn to live together with them, they are our unavoidable travelling companions. Germs must be turned into unseen allies rather than enemies. This is the sole way to win this war, provided that it is a war.