A Bug’s Life

Kari Matchett as Amy in Plague City: SARS in Toronto. Courtesy CTV.

Blockbuster TV movies vie for our attention Sunday, May 29 with films that conform to stereotype — Canadian TV movies are inevitably impassioned public address announcements, where American TV movies are often brassy talent shows.

The American film, Empire Falls (The Movie Channel and TMN), is a handsome, well-catered affair, with a name director, Fred Schepisi (Six Degrees of Separation) and big stars Ed Harris, Paul Newman, Helen Hunt, Joanne Woodward, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Wright Penn taking choice parts in an adaptation of Richard Russo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller of the same name.

Russo also provided the screenplay for the two-part HBO movie — a celebration of communal fortitude that is perhaps best summed up by the film’s advertising line, “Every small town has a big story.”

In contrast, the CTV movie, Plague City: SARS in Toronto, boasts few familiar players. Like almost every Canadian TV movie, it’s a harrowing docudrama, part of a tradition that goes from Milgaard to Love and Hate: The Story of Colin and Joanne Thatcher way back to CBC-TV’s 1970s docudrama series, For the Record.

And like those previous films, Plague City is a cautionary tale — a work that regards viewers not as glad friends, but concerned citizens.

Paul Newman as Max Roby in Empire Falls. Photo Demi Todd. Courtesy The Movie Network.

There is another significant difference that is in no way characteristic of the two countries’ national filmmaking models. Empire Falls is a star-studded snooze, slack as a hammock dramatically, lacking even in cohesive ensemble playing, a failure and disappointment in every sense (though the book was wonderful); whereas Plague City, a film we might expect to be a civic chore — like voting or composting veggies — makes for compulsive viewing.

The success of the Canadian movie, directed by David Wu from a script by Collin Friesen and novelist Pete McCormack (Understanding Ken), would seem to be the result of two creative decisions. First, the filmmakers treat the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus as a character; secondly, there are heroes and villains here, people to root for and against.

In the opening sequence, a Chinese butcher is scratched by a mean-eyed cat, becomes sick, and then coughs on a man who climbs aboard a plane for Toronto. There, the virus becomes a body snatcher, multiplying in crowded elevators and hospital waiting rooms. And so the story becomes a racing medical thriller.

Few of the players here are recognizable to viewers. Amy, head nurse at the Toronto hospital where SARS takes hold, is well played by Kari Matchett (Power Play). And Brian Markinson easily assumes the role of the imperturbable Ontario Deputy Minister Wilson, a character two or three rungs up the corporate weasel ladder from his Da Vinci’s Inquest character, police chief Bill Jacobs.

Lannette New as Rosie, a nurse who contracts SARS in Plague City. Courtesy CTV.

The cast’s anonymity works to the film’s benefit, however, as the masked nurses and doctors become collective protagonists in a film that is free to move like a hunting dog. First we chase after an army of health-care workers as they put in 20-hour days to corral the 250-some patients who came in contact with the infected Chinese visitor. Then the dying begins. Initially, the virus takes the old and infirm. But increasingly fatigued nurses eventually succumb to SARS. (Most of the 44 Canadian victims of the virus were health-care workers.)

Finally, after we’ve been swept away by the dramatic flow, Plague City allows a few big speeches: like the sequence where head nurse Amy addresses her staff after three co-workers — three good friends — have been lost to SARS. Work for these women is now voluntary. The hospital won’t force them to risk their lives. Still, the hospital is crowded with suffering patients.

“We’re nurses, right?” Amy announces, trying to control the play of her emotions. “A lot of us have chosen this profession because we wanted the opportunity to help people in times of need.” Her eyes search the room. “This is one of those times. These people need us.”

Elsewhere, a microbiologist (Rick Roberts) and a Toronto Public Health official (Rahnuma Panthaky) battle the government of Ontario over whether the public should be kept informed of the spread of SARS. The most controversial aspect of the film is undoubtedly the characterization of Tory Deputy Minister Wilson, a composite figure, who reacts to the spreading virus in much the same manner that the mayor of Amity responded to the news of the snacking great white shark in Jaws: Sure, SARS is terrible news; do what you can, but let’s not run around crying the sky is falling — Toronto depends on the tourist dollar.

Told that the city just doesn’t have the resources the health-care workers need to combat the spreading bug, the microbiologist finally snaps. “Either you find the resources,” he shouts, “or you start opening up temporary morgues.”

While Plague City’s big scenes are more powerful for the filmmakers’ sparing use of dramatic fireworks, Empire Falls succumbs to the fatal virus that infects many bestseller adaptations. Russo attempts to knit together all the big scenes that made his original work so memorable, and in doing so loses the restful pauses and idle observations that made his novel a gliding magical ride.

At the diner: Ed Harris as Miles Roby and Paul Newman as Max Roby in Empire Falls. Photo Demmie Todd. Courtesy The Movie Network.

The film is set in a Maine diner, but the sad, lonesome mood of the novel, which made us feel as if Edward Hopper’s painting, Nighthawks, had come alive, gives way to the drone of shrill cameo star turns. Ed Harris’s diner manager, Miles Roby, is besieged by his crusty, alcoholic dad (Paul Newman) and talkaholic ex-wife (Helen Hunt). A blowsy kitchen helper (Theresa Russell) is full of sage advice. There’s also a younger brother (Aidan Quinn) to tell him what to do.

And whenever Miles is left alone for a minute, he stares out the diner window and is assaulted by the past, in the form of damaging memories of his dying mom (Robin Wright Penn) and her fatally charming suitor (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

After Angels in America, the big-star (Pacino-Streep-Thompson), big-event movie that swept up at the Emmys last year, HBO obviously became an A-list employer. Empire Falls is overcrowded and noisy with talent. But it never pays off on its promotional promise. There is no small town here, just a way-too-big story.

Plague City is far more successful at expressing a more modest, typically Canadian message — every big story has a small hero. Here, the good guys are the nameless, masked health-care workers who risked their own lives so that millions of others might breathe easy.

Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.