The Stories Statistics Won't Tell

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/14/arts/television/14MILL.html?th

 

The Stories Statistics Won't Tell

 

By LAURA MILLER

 

 

This is the crematory where they cremate the dead, " says a smiling, slender

woman with a plain, pleasant face, as she pauses while walking with a friend

through a tree-lined terrace. " I, too, will be cremated. Nobody will come here

when I die. "

 

This is one of the piercing moments in the opening installment of " Pandemic:

Facing AIDS, " a five-part documentary series about the lives of people dealing

with the disease in various parts of the world. Directed by Rory Kennedy, it

begins tomorrow night on HBO with its first and second parts broadcast back to

back, and continues on the following three Sundays at noon.

 

The woman, Lek, is Thai, and the serenity with which she describes her expected

end is only skin-deep. The hospice where she has found shelter is a precious

retreat in a lush, bucolic setting, but Lek, a former sex worker, misses her

family terribly. When she becomes convinced that she has only three months to

live, she suddenly decides that she must visit her parents in their distant

village, even though she has so far kept away from them for fear they will be

embarrassed if their neighbors learn that she has AIDS. " I'd rather suffer than

see my parents lose face, " she says.

 

" Pandemic " features the usual statistics, text that appears on screen to inform

us that every 10 seconds someone dies of AIDS, and that by the year 2010, an

estimated 100 million people will have been infected. (The monk who founded the

hospice where Lek is staying says that 10,000 patients are on the waiting list

for its 200 beds.)

 

But it is the everyday tragedies and personal dramas that will strike viewers

most deeply. When Lek shows up unannounced at her parents' house, her wizened

mother caresses her and weeps, while her father stands off, arms folded. Is it

disapproval or dismay at his inability to help that holds him back? Lek does not

die exactly as she predicted, and while nothing can erase the cruelty of her

fate, it is diminished in a way that seems like a small blessing.

 

In the second part, Ugandan villagers dressed in their best clothes take the bus

to a hospital to have their blood tested. This segment focuses on Margaret

Boogere and Apollo Jaramogi, who work for the Ugandan Orphans Rural Development

Program. Their nation, as the narrator, Sir Elton John, explains, has become " a

model success story " in Africa's battle against AIDS.

 

If Lek's is essentially a family story, this one is about a town. The filmmakers

instigate a lively debate among the men and women over which sex bears more

responsibility for the spread of the disease. One man announces that women

should become " so good " that their men will " really love " them and remain

faithful. The women scoff at this. " All men are greedy, " one declares.

 

This continuation of an age-old argument takes a grimmer form later, when 2 of

the 12 villagers who visit the hospital, a man and his 26-year-old wife, learn,

on camera, that they're HIV-positive. " It is his fault, and there is nothing to

be done about it, " the wife says listlessly, holding an infant. If, after they

die, the husband's brother takes in their five children, he will be adding them

to two of his own.

 

Ms. Boogere and Mr. Jaramogi's agency cares for Ugandan children who don't have

anyone. A tall, gawky woman who radiates kindness, Ms. Boogere leads an orphans'

choir in lovely, mournful songs about the pandemic's ravages. Sir Elton's

voice-over explains that before such programs provided education and other forms

of prevention, AIDS wiped out entire Ugandan villages.

 

Ms. Boogere and Mr. Jaramogi show the filmmakers an example of this desolation

when they take them to James Oburu, a tiny 7-year-old first seen driving a cow

with a switch. " James is the father in that family, " Ms. Boogere explains. His

father has died of AIDS, and his mother has run off, leaving only James to care

for his even tinier younger sister in a leaky, barren hut.

 

A grown woman pining for her parents, a little boy shouldering the duties of a

man: though there is nothing cinematically daring about " Pandemic, " at least

judging from the first two episodes, it's impossible to be unmoved by these and

other glimpses it offers of human beings faced with such unbearable and, alas,

all too avoidable loss.

 

PANDEMIC: FACING AIDS

 

HBO, tomorrow night at 7, Eastern and Pacific times; 6, Central time

 

Directed by Rory Kennedy; Rory Kennedy and Liz Garbus, producers; Kate Amend,

editor; Nick Doob and Tom Hurwitz, directors of photography; Mark Bailey,

writer; music by Philip Glass. For HBO: Nancy Abraham, supervising producer;

Sheila Nevins, executive producer; Sir Elton John, narrator. Produced by HBO,

Moxie Firecracker Films and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

 

Laura Miller is a staff writer for Salon.com.

 

 

 

 

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