The First Wave
Christmas has arrived. TV commercials are reminding us that this is the most wonderful time of the year. Hallmark Christmas movies are reeling in the festive viewers. Having endured two far-from-festive seasons thanks to the extreme privations brought by an invisible virus, we certainly seem entitled to be grateful for every last breath. We are ready to join our America friends who have just been celebrating Thanksgiving, and we all look forward to a Merry Christmas. Yet, in stark contrast, I am charged to bring you ‘The First Wave’, a deeply hard-hitting film about death and despair in New York.
I was somewhat reluctant to accept an invitation from National Geographic to attend their screening of this soul-piercing documentary about Covid. At first glance, the trailer for the screening didn’t quite seem to promise me a festive season celebration. However, I still felt somewhat grateful to be alive to witness made my way through the twinkling lights and beautifully decorated Christmas shop displays.
I arrived ready to be taken on an emotional rollercoaster, with my friend clinging close to me, and hanging onto a pack of tissues. The film is set at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens. This was the hardest-hit hospital in New York City during the key months of the Covid outbreak in March to June 2020. Director Matthew Heineman placed his cameras in cinéma vérité style as an unobtrusive observer of the front lines of a health crisis spiralling out of control. His film focuses on the doctors, nurses, and patients, and highlights the human costs and drama of a pandemic that is still raging in many parts of the country, but which, at a pre-vaccine time, looked virtually hopeless.
This film allowed the audience to witness caregivers and patients coming together to fight one of the greatest threats the world has ever encountered. This once-in-a-century pandemic was leaving a devastating trail of death and despair. It changed the very fabric of our daily lives, and exposed long-standing inequities in our society, as we all together tried desperately to navigate the crisis. With each distinct storyline serving as a microcosm through which we can view the emotional and societal impacts of the pandemic, THE FIRST WAVE is a testament to the strength of the human spirit. This film doesn’t focus on the virus, the statistics, or the politics. Its story line concentrates on individual examples of the compassionate care given by the doctors and nurses. I found that, in a strange way, it emphasises the Comfort in this ‘season of comfort and joy”, which it portrays as a different, maybe more hard-hitting form of effective compassion. My friend and I exhausted our pack of tissues.
The First Wave introduces some unforgettable people. There’s Dr Nathalie Douge, a Haiti-born Dr battling to overcome the long odds against a fierce opponent - and someone who also becomes drawn to activism in the midst of it when George Floyd is killed by police in June. This allows the Documentary to merge two events as part of this film which for me highlighted the urgency of “I can’t breathe” We are also introduced to nurse Kellie Wunsch, who we follow and two heroic patients, both who may have been afflicted in their line of duty. including NYPD officer Ahmed Ellis and nurse Brussels Jabon who had recently given birth and fighting for her life. However, throughout this film, there were incredibly beautiful moments in the hospital, when the hospital staff would play ‘The Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun” to celebrate a patient recovering well enough to come off the ventilator.
