TV review: Cocooned's tale of lockdown told with streak of black humour
A scene from the Cocooned documentary on RTÉ One.
There’s a terrific sweetness to Ken Wardrop’s documentaries, and Cocooned (RTÉ One) continues in that vein. Wardrop (Undressing My Mother, His & Hers, etc)
shows respect, fondness and curiosity for his subjects: a group of elderly Irish, sequestered away under Government instruction during Covid-19.
Opening and closing with drone shots of an eerily empty Dublin – 28 Days Later made real – it begins with Leo Varadkar’s portentous St Patrick’s Day 2020 speech and ends with the second lockdown last January.
In between we meet men and women across the country, mostly shot through their windows, as they express concerns, hopes, bewilderment… and a pleasing streak of black humour.
Cocooned quotes George Bernard Shaw, “You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing”; their insistence on joking in the face of dread uncertainty is heartening.
As if set in opposition to participants’ good cheer, the film is punctuated with the apocalyptic tones of George Lee, sundry politicians and health authorities, including one horrific exhortation to “treat each other like pariahs”.
But this “end-times” catastrophising is made absurd by the likes of William from Kilmainham: “Cocooning is a ridiculous bloody word, we’re not going to emerge as beautiful butterflies.”
The first third of Cocooned tracks along Lockdown #1. People get through in different ways: perpetual housecleaning, Jane Fonda workouts, singing circles, watching television they wouldn’t ordinarily (Big Bang Theory, Trump “codding everyone”, old westerns on YouTube), zoning out of Covid overkill.
Then it’s May: restrictions are lifted and they’re allowed go outside. Remembering the mask, smoking in the sunshine, walking the dog, taking the motorbike for a spin, elbow bumps instead of hugs.
You can almost physically feel the leavening of spirits. Then they crash back down, as Micheál Martin announces a new lockdown on December 30. A dark time of year – and dark, seemingly interminable, night of the soul for many.
Still, cheerfulness and good sense abides, and a healthy perspective. Society often infantilises old people, but these are adults, who understand how things are. As Gerry from Meath puts it, “You accept whatever’s happening. You live or die, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
