John Smith is famous for short films offering incisive commentary on the world at large from the confines of his home (or hotel room). His most recent films combine fragments from Boris Johnson’s sometimes grotesque speeches about the virus with glimpses of everyday life, be they of Smith washing his hands or window views of the London skyline. The center of power is not in Westminster but in the banking district. In dramatic changes of light, the city’s glass architecture looks like that of a citadel, a source of horror as well as aesthetic beauty. But the magic it exudes is grotesque and absurd. Its mantras cannot keep the plague at bay.