REVIEW: Contagion

Contagion (2011): Dir. Steven Soderbergh. Written by: Scott Z. Burns. Starring: Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet. Rated PG-13 (Language and gruesome symptoms). Running time: 106 minutes.

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

REVIEW: True Grit

True Grit (2010): Written and Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, based on the novel by Charles Portis. Starring: Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper. Rated PG-13 (some intense scenes of western violence including disturbing images). Running time: 110 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

For the Coen brothers’ version of True Grit, who better to fill the shoes of John Wayne than Jeff Bridges? Though this neo-western isn’t as much a remake of its 1969 predecessor as it is a second adaptation of the original novel, a comparison to the film that won John Wayne his only Oscar is certainly warranted. Fresh off his own Best Actor award for last year’s Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges reunites with the Coens for the first (and only) time since The Big Lebowski. Bridges proves to be just as triumphant as Wayne playing the one-eyed, whiskey drinking U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn, and his performance is arguably even better because of its placement in a more confident and focused film.

Though Bridges receives top billing, the story belongs to Mattie Ross, played with restraint and poise by newcomer Hailee Steinfeld. While the original film was more of a John Wayne vehicle than anything else, the Coens stay closer to the source material by centering their film on Mattie, the 14-year-old girl who seeks vengeance on a drunken criminal named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) who has murdered her father. The determined young girl takes a train into town to see that her father’s body is returned her family’s home in the countryside. While in town, she has “some business” to take care of. That business includes hiring Rooster Cogburn to help her track down Tom Chaney and bring him back to town to be hanged for the murder of her father.

Though the sheriff recommends other men for the job, Mattie Ross is drawn to Cogburn. We first see him in a courtroom, fending off questions for a questionable shooting. The prosecutor tries to get him to admit that he shot an unarmed man, but Cogburn has no patience for such legal technicalities. He shot a man because the man was an outlaw, simple as that. Any discussion that belabors the point is time that could be better spent drinking. When Mattie approaches him after the hearing and offers him fifty dollars to catch Chaney, he dismisses her. He’ll believe her tall tales when he sees the money in front of him. And so she promptly wakes him up the following morning, cash in hand.

Throughout the film, Mattie Ross says that if no one will help her, she’ll shoot and kill Chaney herself. We believe she means it not because she’s a cold-blooded killer but because she speaks with unflinching sincerity. Her vocabulary exceeds that of everyone she comes across and she threatens to make use of her lawyer more often than Cogburn brandishes his pistol. The Coens place a lot of a trust in Steinfeld – who was only thirteen when the movie was filmed – and their faith in the young actress is rewarded. She gets a number of extended close-ups, a choice that might have betrayed a lack of experience in a lesser actress, but Steinfeld rises to the challenge. Her performance is every bit as resolute as her character.

In addition to Bridges, Steinfeld shares screen time with several seasoned veterans. Matt Damon is good as LaBeouf, a Texas Ranger who’s after Chaney for the murder of a Senator. He’s awfully proud of his badge and the film plays for laughs LaBeouf’s failed attempts to act slick. Josh Brolin gets a few scenes’ worth of snarling and looking mean, and the indispensable Barry Pepper appears as the gaunt, almost skeletal outlaw leader “Lucky” Ned Pepper (a role played in the original by Robert Duvall). As is the case in all Coen Bros. films, not a single actor is wasted. Even the briefest of roles deserves some attention, and the film is filled with colorful supporting performances.

When compared to the original, the Coens’ True Grit is paradoxically darker and also funnier than its predecessor. The original has its moments, but mostly suffers from tonal issues. The original True Grit was released in 1969, well after the Golden Age of westerns and despite telling a rather gritty (pardon the pun) story of revenge, the film’s Technicolor landscapes and jubilant score from Elmer Bernstein hark back to that earlier era. Visually, the Coen brothers' take on the story is considerably darker, and they also allow for a little more violence, some of which is even played for darkly humorous effects.

This is also an exceptionally talky western. Bridges garners laughs in some of Cogburn’s more bumbling, drunken moments, but the film’s humor is mostly rooted in its snappy dialogue. The Coen brothers are a remarkably assured team of writer/directors. They’ve carved out their own stylistic niche (Barton Fink, Fargo, and A Serious Man are a few that come to mind as more traditional Coen fare), but they are more than capable of handling a genre flick like this one without losing their distinctive voice.

True Grit is an enthralling execution in an age-old cinematic genre. The western has changed a bit since John Wayne’s days but the genre has proved itself to be an enduring one. In recent years, we’ve seen a handful of westerns make their way to the big screen and while I can’t see a flood of them arriving anytime soon, accomplished features like True Grit show that a one-eyed cowboy and a six-shooter still make for some fine entertainment.

Note: I found it interesting that this violent revenge story, which at one point shows a pair of fingers get chopped off a hand, received a PG-13 rating while The King’s Speech (also in theaters now) got an R rating for an innocent scene that features a brief string of f-bombs. There is nothing particularly offensive in either film, but the disparity reveals just how morally backward those supposed protectors of decency, the MPAA, are.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/07/11

BEST OF THE DECADE - #4: The Departed

The Departed (2006): Dir. Martin Scorsese. Written by William Monahan, based on the film Infernal Affairs. Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Vera Farmiga, Ray Winstone, Alec Baldwin. Rated R (strong brutal violence, pervasive language, some strong sexual content and drug material). Running time: 151 minutes.

The Departed is the third of three excellent Martin Scorsese films released this decade, each starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Scorsese reasserted his versatility with Gangs of New York and The Aviator, bringing his characteristic energy to a historical drama and biopic, respectively. The Departed has been labeled a “return to form” for the director, returning to the subject of his most acclaimed films: gangsters. While that statement underrates the stellar work he’s been putting out, The Departed is particularly noteworthy for bringing a youthfulness to the world of organized crime Scorsese is so familiar with. In his fourth decade of filmmaking, he hasn’t lost any of his fervor for making kinetic cinema, and The Departed is a rapidly paced, gleefully stylized gangster story.

Frank Costello, played by Jack Nicholson, opens the film with a voiceover that provides some context to organized crime in Boston, run largely by the Irish as opposed to the Italians who dominate Scorsese’s usual New York. The monologue primarily serves as an introduction to the man who looms large over the film: a racist, vulgar, and psychotic mobster played with over-the-top zeal in a way only Nicholson can get away with. The montage then establishes the two main characters, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a recently promoted state trooper and Costello’s inside man in the state police, and Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) an undercover cop who works his way into becoming one of Costello’s main men. Scorsese packs the opening twenty minutes with necessary exposition and subtle characterizations, introducing us to the main players and, ingeniously, two minor characters that play significant roles in the final scenes. Much is explained in a short amount of time, and Scorsese conveys it all in a stylistic blur of montages, flashbacks and crosscutting.

The Departed’s style is largely indebted to editor Thelma Schoonmaker, a frequent collaborator with Scorsese. Monahan’s script flows beautifully onscreen, every scene transitioning seamlessly into the next. No doubt many scenes were cut, but the final product is so polished, it’s difficult to imagine a single shot out of place. The editing also brings out some revealing contrasts by frequently intercutting scenes of Costigan’s terrifying and violent life undercover, with scenes of Costigan enjoying a cushy job and an upper-class lifestyle. The constantly moving camera also brings much energy to the film, panning and zooming to follow the rhythms of the dialogue and to underscore the character dynamics.

The attention to detail in the film elevates it beyond the expectations for the average gangster movie, and Scorsese’s use of sound plays a large part in bringing out these details. The first time we meet Costigan, we understand his intelligence by hearing his quick pencil scratches on his police exam. Another scene uses only the sound of screeching car brakes as a transition between scenes, conveying the immediacy of the moment without wasting the few seconds it would take to have an establishing shot of the car. Throughout the film the two double agents communicate with their superiors via cell phones, and phone vibrations and rings play a major role in creating tension. One of the tensest scenes in the film is comprised of little more than close-ups of Costigan and Sullivan and the sound of a vibrating phone.

As is expected with a Scorsese film, The Departed also features an excellent soundtrack, with nearly every scene in the film accompanied by music. The Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter,” a favorite of Scorsese’s, appears more than once, as does Dropkick Murphy’s “Shipping Up to Boston,” which becomes something of an anthem for the film. John Lennon’s “Well Well Well” appears moments before Costello humorously misquotes the music legend, and a great live version of “Comfortably Numb” ironically accompanies a scene between Costigan and Madolyn, his pain killer supplier. Howard Shore’s score, performed mostly by Spanish guitars rather than an orchestra, fills in the gaps with a few memorable themes.

Adapted from the Chinese thriller, Infernal Affairs, William Monahan’s script uses dark humor much as Scorsese’s Goodfellas does, providing some unexpected laughs in an otherwise dense crime drama. Much of this humor comes from the banter of Costello’s cronies and the state police, men whose daily exposure to crime have caused them to take a cavalier approach to violence. The script features a slew of vulgar but undeniably funny one-liners, most of which are uttered by Mark Wahlberg in an Oscar-nominated performance. The heart of the film, however, revolves around Sullivan and Costigan, and DiCaprio and Damon express a range of anxieties as the two men lose track of their identities by pretending to be other people. Vera Farmiga makes a complex character out of a supporting role, Dr. Madolyn Madden, a therapist who becomes involved with the two men, and her dialogue with them provides absorbing interludes to the main action.

Watching the film again, The Departed’s complex plot holds up, and its thematic layers continue to reveal themselves after multiple viewings. Scorsese packs every shot with small details, visual jokes and foreshadowing. The result is that of supreme craftsmanship, and one of Scorsese’s most vibrantly entertaining films to date.