P is for Pandemic Dramas…

Déjà vu

I haven’t been to America but I always imagine I would be constantly beset by déjà vu – so much have we seen on screen – tv and films. I find it is much the same with the present crisis, there have been so many films set in a post-apocalyptic world following a pandemic. So here is a personal and very partial selection.

Friends tell me that Netflix’s new docu-drama series eponymously named Pandemic, bears a striking resemblance to current events but not having seen it yet – for me, the classic series is the 1975 The Survivors in which feral survivors fight for survival in a body strewn world. The credit sequence in black and white begins with a scientist dropping a flask in some Porton Down like place and then passport stamps chart the progress of the virus across the world intercut with shots of the airliners carrying the people spreading it.

Even earlier from 1972, The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, which I saw when I worked as a projectionist at the Ritzy Cinema, Brixton (best ever job),
might be the one of the sources of zombie movies – Heston plays the sole survivor of a plague and desperately searching for a cure…

Another “search for a cure for out of Africa/ animal crossover/ conspiracy” movie is 1995’s Outbreak – an edge of the seat killer virus thriller also given the full Hollywood star treatment.

Twelve Monkeys also contains star performances from Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt in a time-traveling meets virus conspiracy theory. But though superbly if complexly made by Terry Gilliam, this was inspired by an odd, shortish film form France, made up of a narration over still photographs La Jetée. Twelve Monkeys takes a couple of viewings to fully grasp it (but worth it because of the superb performances) but if you get the chance to see La Jetée – don’t miss it.

Finally, a very European film (read too slow and not enough action for most American audiences) -2017’s Bokeh. Filmed in Iceland, a young American couple find that everybody else, seemingly in the whole world, has vanished and the film charts the gradual breakdown of their relationship under the pressure of being “(If) you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy…”