Rated
PG-13 (Disturbing Content and some Language)
Running
Time: 1 Hour & 46 Minutes
Cast-
Matt
Damon-Mitch Emhoff
Gwyneth
Paltrow-Elizabeth ‘Beth’ Emhoff
Laurence
Fishburne-Dr. Ellis Cheever
Kate
Winslet-Dr. Erin Mears
Marion
Cotillard-Dr. Leonora Orantes
Jude
Law-Alan Krumwiede
Jennifer
Ehle-Dr. Ally Hextall
Elliott
Gould-Dr. Ian Sussman
Chin
Han-Sun Feng
Bryan
Cranston- RADM
Lyle Haggerty, PHSCC
John
Hawkes-Roger
Sanaa
Lathan-Aubrey Cheever
Anna
Jacoby-Heron-Jory Emhoff
Directed
by Steven Soderbergh
 |
| Matt Damon's Mitch Emhoff finds himself in the midst of a global pandemic in Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion." |
Nobody
likes getting sick but it happens despite the best of our efforts. I began 2012
on a sour note when I woke up on New Year’s Eve with a sore throat and runny
nose but a quick visit to the doctor had me back on my feet in a week’s time. People
in their twenties tend to take their health for granted and so I viewed my
illness as little more than a pesky nuisance. However, even the most innocent
cough can turn deadly with the billions upon billions of germs floating around
in the air we breathe, not to mention that our hands are making contact with so
many surfaces both consciously and subconsciously. Recent years have brought
the SARS outbreak and the H1N1 ‘swine flu’ pandemic, and yet society did not grind to a halt even as health
organizations continued to warn the public to be wary and take extra
precautions. Hollywood films have often depicted post-apocalyptic futures ravaged
by disease but versatile director Steven Soderbergh once again bucks convention
with “Contagion,” a thought-provoking film in the same vein of his 2000 Academy
Award-winning “Traffic” but instead of the illegal drug trade, it explores how
the scientific community and general public would react when faced by a global
pandemic. Soderbergh’s stylish editing manages to generate a tense atmosphere
of unease thanks to its real world approach and thematic relevance but
“Contagion” intentionally keeps its characters at arm’s length, which may limit
its appeal among audiences expecting a more straightforward thriller.
The film
opens with a black screen and the sound of a hacking cough. Returning from a
business trip in Hong Kong, Elizabeth ‘Beth’ Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) makes a
stop at Chicago to meet up with an old boyfriend named John Neal before
returning home to her family and husband Mitch (Matt Damon) in suburban Minneapolis.
A montage ensues showing random individuals living in Hong Kong, London, and
Tokyo experiencing flu-like symptoms and convulsions before suddenly dying.
Back in Minnesota, Beth’s son Clark contracts the same mysterious illness while
her condition continues to worsen. Mitch wakes up one morning to find his wife
collapsed on the floor and suffering from a severe seizure. He rushes her to
the hospital but the doctors are unable to save her and she dies from the
unknown virus. Returning home in shock, Mitch discovers that the virus has now
taken the life of his son as well. At the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) sends an Epidemic
Intelligence Service officer named Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) to investigate the
virus in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) of the
World Health Organization is sent to Hong Kong to investigate the origins of
the virus. Dubbed MEV-1 (Meningoencephalitis Virus One), the virus begins to
infect thousands of people around the world as the CDC races to find a vaccine.
Internet blogger/journalist Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) fans the flames of
conspiracy by accusing the CDC of withholding the cure at the behest of
pharmaceutical companies. He begins to preach that a drug called Forsythia is able to stop MEV-1. Mass
rioting and looting ensues as people succumb to panic while MEV-1 continues to
infect and kill without discrimination.
Judging from the initial previews, it
wouldn’t be surprising if you mistook “Contagion” as another in a long line of
post-apocalyptic films but Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns instead
approaches the subject matter as a procedural by focusing on how the world
would react when suddenly faced with a global pandemic. The various characters
are largely ancillary as the virus is what drives the film’s interconnected
subplots forward. What makes the film get under our skin is in how it realistically
depicts the loss of social order with desperate people succumbing to mass
hysteria and forced to take matters into their own hands in what appears to be
a hopeless situation. The camera often lingers on seemingly innocuous objects
that we touch everyday to show how easy and quick a disease can spread. A
series of disquieting scenes show the world grinding to a halt as garbage and
bodies pile up on the streets while buildings either sit abandoned or in a
state of disarray due to rampant looting. What’s really shocking is how
inefficient the bureaucracy is when it comes to handling a crisis, although
given what happened with Hurricane Katrina back in 2005, this should not come
as any real surprise. When Mears is setting up an emergency room at a local
school in Minnesota, state officials barge in and blatantly ask ‘Is this coming
out of your budget or ours?’ Apparently saving money takes precedence over
saving lives. These people are even reluctant to shut down public schools in
fear of working parents taking off from shopping during Black Friday.
Soderbergh and Burns also explore how meaningless protocols prevents people
from doing their job such as when Cheever wants to bring Mears back home but is
unable to because an infected congressman has become the priority. Those in
power keep from revealing information as a way to prevent panic but such
tactics are shown to have the complete opposite effect as regular citizens
become outraged and look for a scapegoat to blame. Our modern world allows
instantaneous communication but it also shows how fast it can all crumble and
fall apart at a moment’s notice. Like the virus itself, all this is presented
in a clinical and detached manner as characters are killed off without a hint
of emotion. When burying the infected bodies, bored workers muse not on the
loss of life but the lack of body bags to store them. Even the colors in each
frame invoke a sterile tone to reflect the matter-of-fact manner of how bad the
situation is.
However, the worldwide scope does lead to some stumbles as the
subplots are presented in an uneven manner with Krumwiede lacking consistency
as a character and Orantes disappearing for a large stretch until the final
minutes of the film. Initially, Krumwiede is shown to be a hard-line conspiracy
theorist but is later revealed to a selfish opportunist who is spreading lies
about a miracle core yet his demeanor never seems to reflect that as he appears
to genuinely believe in his convictions.
In addition, the Orantes subplot is resolved in a rather xenophobic manner,
even if it is unintentional. Nonetheless, it does not completely derail
“Contagion” from being an effective cautionary tale of how easily our carefully
constructed lives can fall apart at something so small that it cannot be seen
with the naked eye.
Soderbergh has gathered an impressive ensemble cast but all
of them play unglamorous roles and are used to illustrate the themes of the
film. There is no true ‘main’ character but Matt Damon makes for an effective
audience stand-in as everyman Mitch Emhoff, providing a human touch to the proceedings
even as the world falls apart around him. However, Bryan Cranston and John
Hawkes end up being wasted due to the limited screen-time they have. Jude Law
tends to lean toward scenery chewing but for the most part, the cast manages to
give fairly nuanced performances despite their deliberately underwritten roles.
“Contagion” was one of the first Blu-Ray releases of 2012 and while it won’t
exactly blow anyone away, the video and audio qualities remain impressive. The
film has a sharp look since it was shot with the RED MX digital camera with
various yellow and blue filters used. Many of the environments come off as sterile
in appearance but detail is strong and flesh-tones retain a natural color
despite the various filters used. The only vibrant scenes that stand out are
the flashbacks taking place in a casino in Hong Kong. On the audio front, the
dialogue is handled well with Cliff Martinez’s jazz-techno score slowly
ratcheting up the tension with its subtle thumping beats. Special features are
slim with only three featurettes
lasting from a paltry two to eleven minutes. Not even an audio commentary was
included!
Released on September 9, 2011, “Contagion” received largely positive
reviews with 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics hailed it as a ‘tense, tightly
plotted…exceptionally smart and scary disaster movie’ but audiences weren’t
quite as enamored and graded the film a B- according to CinemaScore polling. Despite
this supposedly ‘mediocre’ score, the film still managed to earn a solid $175
million worldwide ($76 million domestic) against an estimated $60 million
production budget, although I suspect much of this money went toward the A-list
cast’s paychecks and various travel expenses. Once again, Soderbergh has taken
an unconventional approach to a familiar genre and the result is a stylish film
that does not pander to the audience by resorting to meaningless CG spectacle
or exposition. “Contagion” has its flaws but it does not diminish its most
compelling aspect—the fragility of our modern world.
Final
Rating: 4 out of 5
“Someone
doesn't have to weaponize the bird flu. The birds are doing that.”
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