3 stars (out of four)
During a quiet scene in Contagion, the new film from director Steven Soderbergh, I
became acutely aware of every sound in the theater – every crinkle of a
wrapper, every clearing of a throat – and realized the film was doing what it
was intended to do.
Early on in Contagion there is a reference to Jaws that reveals the film’s aim. Similar to how that
Spielberg classic played on our fear of the open ocean and made audiences think
twice before the next time they went for a dip, Contagion takes a common fear – a worldwide virus outbreak –
and crafts an effective thriller around it. We learn in the film that we touch
our faces hundreds of times per day, (a point reinforced by frequent close-ups
of hands), an unconscious habit that allows for the rapid spread of disease.
With that information planted in our minds, each cough and sniffle in the film
(deliberately foregrounded in the audio mix) become Contagion’s fin in the water – a sign of impending danger.
The film builds its queasy energy by assembling several
storylines with characters that are connected by the mysterious disease. There
is the American (Gwyneth Paltrow) whose business trip to Hong Kong may be
responsible for the initial spread of the disease. Her husband (Matt Damon) and
daughter (Anna Jacoby-Heron) provide the emotional arc of the film as they
grapple with day-to-day life while the virus takes hold of the country.
On the bureaucratic end of things are Dr. Cheever (Laurence
Fishburne) and his protégé Dr. Mears (Kate Winslet) of the Center for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) who investigate the disease in pursuit of a cure.
Assisting in that goal are researchers Ian Sussman (Elliott Gould) and Dr.
Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) as well as French correspondent Dr. Orantes (Marion
Cotillard) whose investigation of the outbreak’s source in Hong Kong takes an
unexpected turn.
Meanwhile, a vicious blogger named Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law)
scrutinizes the CDC’s every move and makes allegations of a partnership between
the government and pharmaceutical companies. He is a political revolutionary
of the modern age whose shocking online posts bring new meaning to the phrase
‘viral videos.’
Krumwiede is one of the film’s many insistent (bordering on
incessant) reminders that the film takes place in the present day. Information
is obtained and spread through video surveillance, texting, Twitter and other
technological advancements familiar to most Millennials. These contemporary
details are pervasive to the point of being overwhelming, though perhaps that’s
the point. Much of the film’s dialogue blows by in a flurry of acronyms and
multisyllabic mouthfuls, a fair dramatization of information overload in the
Internet Age.
Soderbergh handles this material well, though. His frenetic
style makes sense of the chaos unfurling onscreen and pulls the film’s many
characters together into a cogent whole. He balances tense scenes of frayed
nerves and frantic phone calls with more sober moments of investigative
reporting that plunge into the murky realm of geopolitics without getting
didactic.
Emphasis on international affairs does lead to an inherent
lack in human empathy. The film is more interested in presenting the inner
workings (and subsequent failings) of government agencies than telling a story
about individuals. Soderbergh explores the ways in which these agencies
communicate with one another to find a balance between law and moral order when
catastrophe strikes. Contagion is
critical of the layers of red tape that prevent decisive action but never
villainizes any of its characters.
On further reflection, the earlier comparison to Jaws is not a perfect one. In 1975, that film created –
or at least propagated – a fear of shark attacks. The terror lurking behind
every scene of Contagion, however,
does not originate with the film but rather is one that has already attained a
level of omnipresence in our lives. Whether the threat of a pandemic is just
media noise or indeed the fate of mankind remains to be seen. Either way, Contagion thoroughly documents that fear for future
generations and offers a chilling apocalyptic tale in the meantime.
- Steve Avigliano, 9/13/11
