The COVID-19 pandemic was a strange blip in history for all of us. For the movies, it was (and still could be) devastating. Movies were forced out of the theater and into the far riskier market of streaming services to mixed results.
This week, I found time in what has been an exhausting weekend to watch Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods,” one of the collection of “pandemic movies” that released while the world was under lockdown. I never got around to it for some reason, despite having all the time in the world in 2020 as a graduating high school senior about to head off to college.
To say I was blown away is an understatement. I couldn’t believe a movie that I’ve known about for years but never got around to was this good. What a fool I had been! Two and a half hours after starting the movie, I was certainly amazed, but my own guilt of having delayed it for so long was palpable.
I want to talk about this movie, but I must implore those interested to just go watch it, just as blind as I was. If you need convincing, the premise follows a group of Black Vietnam veterans reentering the jungle for buried treasure in the present day and coming to terms with the war whose impact is still affecting them today. It’s a beautiful collection of Black politics and existential legacy. It’s a brutal, gory and a frustratingly tragic film at times, but I adored it all the same.
“Da 5 Bloods” was never meant to be a pandemic film, although its release schedule with Netflix at least cursed it to be consumed primarily through inopportune ways. With the timing of its release in summer 2020, along with the other major event in that timeframe of the Black Lives Matter protests, it’s structured to represent the current times, but sent to the wayside all the same.
“Da 5 Bloods” was not nominated for Best Picture for 2020, only having a single nomination for Best Score (which is a wonderful homage to the brassy soundtracks of other Vietnam movies). The Best Picture snub is something I’m retroactively disappointed in. “Da 5 Bloods” is spectacular and probably my favorite movie to come out of that year.
So what does this have to do with the pandemic? I’m willing to argue that forcing movies out of theaters during this time will eventually lead to the early 20s being remembered as a blip in this small part of cultural history. Now that we’re almost halfway through the decade (2019 was somehow five years ago), these pandemic movies must be remembered.
Pandemic movies are fascinating, as the ones that are currently acclaimed are less grand and far more existentially personal than what’s traditional. 2020′s “Nomadland” Best Picture win is the best example of this, as a deeply personal tale about a woman who travels across the United States as a nomad, mostly alone. It’s a slow burn, but for a pandemic movie where all of us were nursing a lonely flame, the themes echoed true.
“CODA” in 2021, the first streaming service Best Picture (Apple TV+ beat Netflix to the punch, funnily enough) centered on a deaf family and followed 2020′s indie surprise of “Sound of Metal” as another feature focused on deaf issues. “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the first science-fiction film to receive Best Picture, closed the pandemic era of movies with a bizarre and sometimes beautiful spin on avoiding nihilism while still being a fun action movie.
The story of “Top Gun: Maverick” being the Hollywood movie to bring audiences back to the theater is found when knowing that spectacle and action was finally working as a draw again. Quiet existentialism certainly has still, and will always be, an important part of storytelling for the critically acclaimed, but pandemic movies seemed to hit harder during one of the world’s most reflective times.
I wish I was more aware of the movies of this current decade, but the pandemic and college took a lot out of me. The gap meant that I have some catching up to do. As a young human from Gen Z, I will always be looking into the past century to find quality movies, but it hurts more to know that there are new amazing movies I’m putting off viewing for one reason or another.