The Wasted Potential of Fauci
Anthony Fauci, the immunologist who has served as the scientific face of America’s COVID-19 response, is many things to many people. To those who viewed Donald Trump’s presidency as a vulgar rejection of everything logical and decent, Fauci has become a symbol of reason and decency: the calm adult in the room who can lead us through this pandemic. To COVID skeptics and anti-vaxxers who are more friendly to Trump’s views on the establishment and the pandemic, Fauci has been a one-size-fits-all villain who represents everything incompetent or corrupt, or downright villainous about those in power.
As a result of our politics becoming increasingly intertwined with celebrity media culture, the polarization in the national reception to Fauci has been alarming. One minute, you’ll see him photoshopped to look like a demon, and the next you’ll hear people hailing him as an unconventional sex symbol. When he makes a statement on the virus, one group will hang onto every word while the other will believe the exact opposite.
The new National Geographic documentary Fauci is made for the fans, including extensive interviews with Fauci as well as his family and friends. And while a documentary’s subject agreeing to participate in interviews certainly doesn’t mean that they agree with the film’s content, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Fauci is an extended puff piece. It features scenes of Fauci and his wife, Christine Grady, taking walks together and talking to their daughters over Zoom. Old home videos are played frequently, showing a younger Fauci playing with his family in a relaxed environment. It becomes clear that Fauci is designed to show the man behind the symbol; ironically, it will appeal mainly to people entirely invested in that very same symbol.
This isn’t to say that the film’s directors, John Hoffman and Janet Tobias, don’t have anything to say. About half the film is dedicated to showing Fauci’s early days dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. A clear connection is drawn between the two crises, and the film shows how Fauci is no stranger to public outrage and divisiveness.
The main focus is Fauci’s relationship with the Act Up activist movement that sought to end the AIDS epidemic. Founded by gay rights activist Larry Kramer, Act Up viewed Fauci as moving too slow and not doing enough to address the disease that was ravaging the LGBTQ community. The film tracks how Fauci grew to have an affinity for the young activists who initially viewed him as callous and incompetent. Eventually, Fauci brought Act Up activists to the table and used their experience and advice in determining how to tackle AIDS. It’s a powerful story and one that could have used more fleshing out.
Fauci’s issues with the Trump administration and national response to COVID are so ubiquitous in the current news cycle that scenes focusing on the present moment feel obligatory and redundant. There isn’t a single person who will watch Fauci without knowing the doctor’s modern significance. If his current struggles had solely been used as a jumping-off point for the story of his relationships with AIDS, the documentary would feel weightier and more vital.
Because Fauci is so invested in pleasing fans of the man himself, what should be hard-hitting scenes sometimes feel tepid and emotionally distant. The pain felt within the gay community during the peak of the AIDS crisis runs so deep that it’s almost unimaginable. There are interviews with Act Up activists who lived through that hardship, but the focus is mainly on their now-glowing opinions of Fauci. The film shows early Act Up protests against Fauci, but their specific grievances are only briefly touched on. It’s not dissimilar to how the film treats the criticisms of modern-day Fox News commentators who are heard speaking poorly of Fauci and then never brought up again.
This isn’t to say that the film has a negative view of the early Act Up movement, but the conflict that pressured Fauci and the Federal Government to change their AIDS strategy is rushed through so that the film can arrive at Fauci opening his mind and ultimately bringing Act Up into the conversation. A scene featuring archival footage of Fauci participating in an Act Up town hall is supremely engaging, but it would have been more effective if the film had truly shown us his initial missteps or his evolving relationship with Larry Kramer. Instead, the film feels like it’s only scratching the surface.
Any writer knows that the more a character is knocked down, the more audiences will connect when the character eventually triumphs. Fauci makes the mistake of never letting us feel uncertainty or pain for an extended period; there’s always a reminder that Fauci is happy and the reasonable people who doubted him now all love him.
At one point, Fauci says during an interview that he is still affected by memories of the AIDS pandemic, and he goes as far as to say that he’s suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome. This feels like it should be a rich development for the film, but later scenes don’t do much to address his mental state other than broadly telling us that he’s resilient and proud of the work he’s done. It hardly feels intimate or honest.
