What if a deadly virus ripped through the world , shattering cities and killing millions , but you had the chance to view the carnage from sealed government labs and well - appointed boardrooms ? That ’s the hope of Contagion , a fascinating pestilence procedural from Steven Soderbergh , where more tension radiates from powerpoint presentations about viral elaboration than it does from a slam of mass graves .
Contagion is fundamentally an inside - out variant of terrific zombi pestilence movie 28 Days Later . In the latter , which is a more typical viral Book of Revelation flick , we look on victim abandoned by the world , seek to cope with a civilization that has wholly degenerated into horror . In Contagion , we follow suits and scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization as they adjudicate to reset the mystery of a disease that ’s killing the human race . It ’s probably no surprise that conductor Soderbergh has give us a moving-picture show about disease political sympathies , a thought experiment where volume epidemic becomes an occasion to stage a dispute between Union agency , privately - funded biotech companies , and corrupt medium fearmongers .
Light spoilers ahead .
Like Soderbergh ’s classic moving-picture show Traffic and Ocean ’s 11 , transmission feature an ensemble mould of standout actors , from the mesmerize Jennifer Ehle as an intense CDC scientist to Breaking Bad ’s Bryan Cranston as a paranoid Public Health Service honcho . Unlike type in Soderbergh ’s other films , though , the people in Contagion seldom do together and are united by nothing but the disease itself . Filmed in a montage - grievous elan that seems to emulate the spread of the disease across many places at the same time , Contagion begins with Gwyneth Paltrow starting to cough in an drome barroom as she verbalize on her mobile with a guy she just hooked up with – unknowingly seeding the computer virus in Chicago on her way home to her married man ( Matt Damon ) and kids in Minnesota .
As she sicken and perish , we blink our elbow room through montages that take us gradually nigher to the characters who use up the meat of the story : The scientists and bureaucrat of the CDC and the WHO , and their infertile , lab’s - eye - view of the situation as it croak from dozens of death to millions . As head of the CDC , Laurence Fishburne turn in a grave accent - but - strong performance , and Kate Winslet is perhaps one of the most sympathetic characters as an epidemiological investigator for the CDC who dies tracking the disease whose origins she helps to uncover . It ’s only when we follow Winslet ’s character , and to a certain extent Damon ’s , that we ever see the human price of the virus that ’s eat on its way through every country in the earth .
Soderbergh ’s photographic camera seems to shy off from carnage , and we only see peculiarly hushed , well - run overflow care centers in sport stadiums , flanked by mass graves so tidy that they arouse sorrowfulness but not anxiety . We watch some looting go on in the neighbourhood where Damon ’s quality endure with his one survive daughter , but it seems peculiarly distant . It help oneself that everyone we ’re following is either in a uninspired lab environment , a protect government facility , or just resistant to the disease as Damon ’s character is .
Obviously this was a conscious selection on Soderbergh ’s part , to neglect the clichés of carnage to emphasize the great picture only glimpse by high - up decision - Creator in a clock time of crisis . Doing this allows him to severalise taradiddle you rarely see render alfresco of novels like Mira Grant ’s acclaimed Feed , which is as much about medium reply to epidemic as it is the disease itself . While true statement - telling bloggers come forth as heroes in Grant ’s novel , however , Contagion paints them as scare - mongering vampires . Indeed , the worst menace in Contagion is not the computer virus but Jude Law ’s blogger Alan , a snaggle - toothed , fame - obsessed weirdie who seems loosely based on TechCrunch ’s Michael Arrington . Like Arrington , Alan is using his considerable online keep abreast to crowd a intersection he ’s secretly invested in — in this case , a homeopathic remedy that he claim can cure the computer virus . claim the edacious pharmaceutic companies are in league with the government to embrace up cheap cures , Alan put up a television where he pretends to be cured by the therapeutic . The most horrific scene of syndicate violence we get in Contagion is when people smash the windows of a pharmacy to get the last remaining dot of this remedy , after reading Alan ’s web log .
It seems that a malicious meme is more deadly than a biological virus .
While this is an interesting dot , it ’s also connected to one of the weakest aspects of Contagion . Though Soderbergh gives us a rude glimpse of the corruption in medium , he shies away from ever questioning the motivation of his scientific discipline hero . The estimate that pharmaceutic companies will make gazillion off the vaccinum for this computer virus — a perfectly fairish claim that Alan makes on his web log — is glossed over entirely . Indeed , in all the minute item of bureaucratic disease tracking we see , pharmaceutical caller and their executive never once walk onscreen . The undivided coup d’oeil we get of a privately - funded scientist comes when a interested - looking Eliot Gould put on the line his life — and career — by go on to work on crock up the viral code that the political science has deemed too hot to handle outside the CDC . In a pic consecrate to complexity , this seems like an dreadfully simplistic way to dismiss what would in all probability be the individual biggest issue deal a world-wide epidemic : Who funds , manufactures , and distributes the vaccine ?
Perhaps this will sound rum to say , but hyperrealism has its own trade name of plothole , and Contagion ’s biggest one is the persona that secret industry would play in this disease outbreak scenario . This blindness stands in stark contrast to the nuanced , equivocal resolution of the film , when we finally learn how the virus got commence . Blame for it — if we can really place inculpation for indifferent development — fall on a complicated entanglement of corporate interest , outside family relationship , and human error .
Despite its flaws , the movie remains an interesting mentation experiment , and a weirdly reassuring look at how our scientific asylum would react to a health crisis of epical proportion . transmission suffers from an occasionally sterile perspective on what should be an emotionally agonising experience , but it ’s refreshing to see what happens when you turn a repugnance flick assumption into something that feels like a good episode of The West Wing .
MoviesPlagueSteven Soderbergh
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