Patrick Gower: On Lockdown shows the best and worst of Paddy

The second installment of the On… series by Patrick Gower deals with the subject that has touched us all this year. But the documentary seems almost as fascinated by Gower himself, writes Sam Brooks.

It seems strange, the day that Auckland comes out of a confinement, his second, to be watching a documentary about the first. But that’s what Patrick Gower: On Lockdown gives us. The continuation of Gower’s 2019 documentary On Weed, On Lockdown is the Newshub journalist’s personal take on the only universal experience of 2020: Covid-19. Specifically, the nationwide lockdown just a few months ago, which now feels like lifetimes ago.

Where On Lockdown has the most value, appropriately, is as an archival document of what actually happened during Covid-19. It presents a timeline of how the pandemic came to New Zealand, the various groups, and the government’s response to it. Even a few months after the first outbreak, seeing it like this, with clear, raw images, is helpful. The documentary also fills in the blanks in some of the major Covid stories of the past few months. Gower interviews the Bluff couple whose wedding was the epicenter of New Zealand’s first outbreak, along with key people involved in the Covid response, from an essential worker to the Bloomfield-Ardern dream team.

The interview with Bluff’s partner is excellent – he asks some tough questions without ever looking like exploitation. Equally good are the interviews with Ashley Bloomfield and Jacinda Ardern. It’s valuable to see Bloomfield at work, rather than stand behind the podium at a 1pm press conference, as well as getting the prime minister’s frank account of why she made the decision to go into lockdown in the first place. . When we see them every day, it’s easy to forget that these are real people, not just the public face of the Covid response. Bloomfield is pleasantly lighthearted in her interview, recounting how, coincidentally, she was in Southland the same weekend as Bluff’s wedding – she was there to watch her son compete in the national bagpipe championships – and dropped her decision to go so late. that he had to stay backpacking. For people who see this in the future, when Covid-19 is nothing more than an unpleasant memory, these interviews will be an important record of the decision-making that got us through this crisis.

An empty city during level 4. (Photo: Three)

On Lockdown is cleverly done, but distracting. There are long, moody shots of empty streets, color-corrected to make it look like the apocalypse is near. Interviews are done with the kind of shaky camera you associate with independent Sundance and Bourne films. It’s clearly meant to underscore the hectic nature of those early days of lockdown and the uncertain nature of life under Covid, but it’s a self-sabotaging approach to the material. We know what the confinement was like, we were there. There is a limit to what a slow motion camera looking around a door frame or pacing a hospital corridor can do for an audience, especially when used as a setting for seemingly every interview or topic of conversation.

Another distraction is the amount of Paddy Gower in On Lockdown, which is a lot, understandably, given his name is in the title. Gower is a respected journalist and an empathetic but opinionated interviewer. It makes sense that he’s at the forefront of his own series. But the documentary centers it in a way that doesn’t necessarily illuminate anything about the confinement, other than perhaps what it was like to work and travel during level four. Gower’s voiceover is used liberally, as are his reaction shots during interviews. We often watch or hear Gower react to information, and Gower is not a neutral personality. Their responses, abundantly peppered with “bottom of the world” clichés, are not neutral. The constant close-up of Gower’s view of events makes On Lockdown feel less like a documentary and more like a video essay.

Patrick Gower talks to a virologist in Patrick Gower: On Lockdown. (Photo: three)

The irony is that On Lockdown is actually most effective when it puts a human face on Covid-19. Despite all the impact on the economy, Covid-19 affects humans first and foremost. When Patrick Gower speaks with the Bluff wedding couple, they express something of what we have all felt during this pandemic. You see them struggling with incomprehensible intersections of emotions (guilt, loss, pain) and you can’t help but be moved. When the wife says, “I want to remember that day, not everything that happened afterward,” you feel it. It’s one of the highlights of the entire special, and it shows you exactly why Gower is, in many ways, the right person to do this – you can get the interview and conduct it in a way that doesn’t just speak to the couple. experience, but they also reflect everyone else’s experience with Covid-19.

There are many things I like about On Lockdown, but there are also mind-boggling options, such as the decision to interview members of the billionaire Mowbray family (which owns the Zuru toy brand), rather than the small business owner. or someone whose livelihood has been completely destroyed by this pandemic. But the documentary never lets you forget that this is Paddy Gower locked up. It’s the Paddy Gower run. Follow what he thinks is important and newsworthy, not objective; It cannot be. Perhaps it is better to see this not as the definitive document on the confinement, but as the opinion of a very well placed and capable journalist. You can get Paddy out of lockdown, but you can’t get him out of On Lockdown.

The Patrick Gower On Lockdown screens at 8:30 tonight at Three.