Fauci - Movie Review
By Monica Sullivan
In the 1980's AIDS hit San Francisco like a bomb. You lost friends and relatives you thought would be part of your life forever. In some ways I still think of them that way. Some of the top writers in the city were lost to us forever. We mostly focused on people in San Francisco in the war against AIDS, but there were other people fighting just as hard in the rest of the country. One doctor, many miles away, was Anthony Fauci, whom I did not become really aware of until a tourist ship arrived in San Francisco in early 2020 with passengers who caught a new disease called Covid 19. Another epidemic had started in San Francisco. Frantic people searched desperately for a vaccine and learned about the disease from Dr. Fauci, who was the voice of sanity in an insane time. We got conflicting information from conflicting government agencies. Yes, it was a terrible nightmare. Many persisted in cooperating with Dr. Fauci's recommendations, but not everybody. We were comforted by his calm restraint. It was shocking to see the polarization of people who were torn between treatments, solutions and for lack of a better word, escapes. One of my sisters left the country and hasn't been back since and my uncle died a week before he was scheduled to get his shot.
The documentary "Fauci" shows what a hard time Dr. Fauci has had with both pandemics and for all the people he helped and comforted there are still people who disbelieve the efficacy of the vaccine he worked so hard to get people to take. To me, Dr. Fauci is a great hero and his family and support team, that I wish everyone had, is an inspiration to watch. His close family loved and trusted and believed in him and provided a break from the hard decisions being made. The two things that struck me most about Dr. Fauci were the way he won over AIDS activists who initially thought he was their enemy and the calm he projected in a sea of misinformation during the current Covid crisis. It is an inspiration to see the same doctor who was despised at the outset become cherished by people who realized how much good he was doing in the world. I get a good feeling whenever I see my Dr. Fauci doll on my shelf because I know that he is working hard for all of us. My only criticism of the film is, after the agony of having a terrible President for four years, I had to watch him again in this film.
Movie Magazine International
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