Saturday, June 19, 2021

24/52 - The Last Cruise

 

The Last Cruise (2021) - This one had been on my radar since I noticed it had popped up on HBO. This documentary is about the Diamond Princess cruise ship that set sail from Japan in the very early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. It ended up being the first and largest outbreak outside of China and the passengers and crew were quarantined on board for many many days as the various governments figured out how to get their citizens off the boat and ultimately back home safely.

Given it's short, 45 minute-ish, run time, this documentary isn't a deep analysis of the situation at play here. The focus is more on the first person account from some passengers and staff. Most of the footage is from those passengers and staff themselves as they documented their own experiences of frustration, fear and anxiety. Being over a year into this pandemic, it's an interesting look back at how much we didn't know about what was happening and what was to come. 

This documentary really highlighted the difference between the passengers and the crew. While the passengers were quarantined to the their cabins the crew still worked below deck in close quarters and lived in even tighter quarters. It would be easy to measure these different situations against each other, but it's important to see each person as an individual going through their own hardship/trauma in a situation like this. I think this documentary also reinforces the idea that we need to take a good long look at what type of work is actually essential and equitable access to medicine/health care. That the medical team on board was overwhelmed and under prepared for the situation that they were in is overtly obvious. This documentary doesn't dive into even attempting to answer these bigger issues at play, but it does a good job at exposing them. 

I watched this on Crave.

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