Contagion

Consider it a non-sensational, high concept thriller. Consider it the anti-blockbuster. Contagion takes the rather well-worn notion of a deadly virus being unleashed upon the world to devastating effect, following stories of people just trying to survive in their homes when panic and public disorder is rampant and tracing the efforts of scientists trying to maintain order and, more pertinently, find a cure. Familiar-sounding notions to any celluloid-hardened moviegoer, but Contagion tackles the subject with an austere, matter-of-fact tone.

It would be a step too far to consider it dispassionate. Contagion is far from coldly distanced. Director Steven Soderbergh is most interested in the people affected, be it a father (Matt Damon) struggling to hold on to what remains of his family to a near-heroic doctor (Jennifer Ehle) who breaks protocol and risks herself by deliberately getting herself infected to test the cure she believes she’s discovered.



The script by Scott Z. Burns is fashioned by an urge to stay true to how such a crisis would really be, and doesn’t flinch from scientific terms (nowhere else in movie history will news that an “R-Nought” figure has increased bring about such a sense of doom) that neatly and deftly get explained without sounding clumsy.



The cast list is peppered with famous faces, from the aforementioned Matt Damon and Jennifer Ehle, to Kate Winslet, to Laurence Fishburne (with one of the best roles he’s had in as long as I can remember), to Gwyneth Paltrow, to Marion Cotillard, to Jude Law. The great thing about Contagion is in avoiding the conventional tropes of who lives and who dies. The general Hollywood taboo of having children die is crunched early, and when one major character wakes up in bed midway through the film, coughing, the gasps around the auditorium at the news this person was set to die let you know how effective the surprise is.

The film delights in allowing the audience to know that the virus is passed on through touch, direct and indirect. A person gripping a handrail on a public bus, or preparing food for someone else, leaving a residue behind that the next unwitting person may contract. . . Contagion makes little fuss but lingers on these hot spots, screaming a silent warning, dripping with latent dread.

Save for a few flowing montage sequences set to music of such contamination, though, Contagion limits itself to sticking with its core characters. There’s not much in the way of sweeping shots of desolated cities, yet I admired how the sense of devastation was conveyed. Possibly the film could have better identified the exact scale of the crisis; it seemed strange that Matt Damon’s Mitch was eking out a life where supermarkets were getting ransacked and his car threatened to be stolen if he left it alone and yet, say, Laurence Fishburne’s character was driving around freely and calling his loved ones. Probably it was purely about where they these people were geographically located in reference to the epicentre of the outbreaks – I just don’t think that point was well-translated.



Arguably the film extended itself to make points that were lost, or ones that felt slightly misplaced. Marion Cotillard’s character gets involved in a kidnapping plot that felt like it got swept up off its feet and then disappeared without trace only to be dropped back in at the end of the movie; it reeked of something that didn’t make the cut to be fully-justified and, as a consequence, perhaps ought to have been excised completely. Marion Cotillard is always a welcome sight for these eyes, but there’s little denying she’s rather sidelined here.

Jude Law fares better, playing an odious freelance, online writer. With bad teeth, poor clothes and a venal agenda masking as moral crusade there’s little room for vanity in the performance, and it’s to Law’s credit. The point of his story survives better than, say, Cotillard’s, although the precise beats of it all weren’t overly-clear at first. The issue with a drug he claims serves as a cure, that has millions fervently craving it, but which is untested and potentially useless was an interesting topic, ripe for examining here. The nature of public information and misinformation during time of a crisis is perfectly-suited to the content, but the message got garbled; shades of grey ultimately get painted in black and white.



Contagion was a curious cinema viewing experience for me in that, during it, I felt it was trundling when it should have been running and left me kind of freewheeling. Those brief shock moments are made effective due to this style, such as Matt Damon hearing gunshots from a neighbour’s house and seeing gunmen flee, and you know he’s thinking the same thing as you: that could have been his house and the only person who can protect his property is himself. Yet for the most part Contagion feels slow, and you’re almost waiting for the virus to really start decimating the masses because you know it’s coming anyway so why doesn’t the film get on with it?



Afterwards, however, kicking over what I saw and, more importantly, how the characters reacted and what they had done (and, in some cases, had done to them) I realised how effective Contagion had been in just showing me something incredible without fanfare and fuss, and how that had generated a film that was really memorable. I might make a pun here, about how it had infected my memory and spread from there to take hold over time, but I’m trying to find a cure for that pathological condition! Instead I'll say Contagion shares the same ruthless hallmarks as a virus - it goes about its intended business with a sharp efficiency but that doesn't necessarily make it perfectly formed.