Contagion

The term “contagion” itself is formally described in Webster's as a “disease-producing agent as a virus; an influence that spreads rapidly; the transmission of a disease by direct or indirect contact”. Steven Soderbergh’s film of the same name depicts all of the above. In the movie, an anomalous virus (MEV-1) that kills within days makes its way around the globe by way of random encounters between unsuspecting fomites and unfortunate hosts. Mirroring the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918 which killed some 50 million people, Contagion presents an abhorrent glimpse into the trepidation of what could happen if such a pandemic were to occur again today. And by that regard, some have deemed the film to be a horror movie. Not so much like Stanley Kubrick or Clive Barker, rather a vastly more realistic horror that is induced through the prospect of human mortality. The very idea that you could be dead in 48 hours because you shook hands with someone earlier is frightful, or at the very least thought provoking. Soderbergh fosters that fear and creates a faced-paced thriller that is actually very plausible. The world has seen such epidemics many times before and at present, in some afflicted places such as Vietnam and Haiti, many people are experiencing a contagion for themselves. This film takes that reality and introduces it to the general public—how does such a disaster like this begins, how do people deal with it, and ultimately how they survive it.

Gwyneth Paltrow as Beth Emhoff in the final stages of the MEV-1 virus.

The story itself begins on "Day 2", on the brink of an onset of global infection. Beth Emhoff, played by Academy Award® winner Gwyneth Paltrow, is en route to her home in Minneapolis from a business trip in Hong Kong. We find her in the air port, admits dozens of people, making phone calls and passing time at a bar awaiting her flight. And then she coughs. Not a big deal right? People cough all the time when they inhale smoke or ingest something down the wrong canal—wrong. By this point, Beth has already contracted the virus and unsuspectingly is passing it along to everyone and everything she comes in contact with. She disregards her seemingly everyday symptoms, attributing them to mere jet-lack, and boards her plane as planned. However when she does reach her suburban home front, she ends up collapsing, foaming at the mouth, and having severe seizures. Beth is rushed to the hospital where she abruptly dies. It is clear at this moment that what she had contracted in Asia was much more serious than just jet-lack.

Matt Damon as Mitch Emhoff

Academy Award® winner Matt Damon portrays Beth's husband Mitch Emhoff. As if losing his wife wasn't already devastating enough, he returns home to find that his stepson has also died inexplicably with identical symptoms. Mitch is left without any answers from the attending physicians who understandably can't diagnose what they know nothing about. He is immediately put under isolation at the hospital, but soon deduce that since he hasn't developed any symptoms despite his direct contact with the virus, he must be immune. Although he has already lost one child, he quickly realizes that he still has a daughter to think about and sets his priorities on her survival. Although I cannot speak as highly of the young actress Anna Jacoby-Heron who plays his daughter Jory Emhoff, Damon's performance here is probably the best of the entire picture. We see this astute progression of emotions from the very moment that the doctors tell him that his wife is dead, to him trying to salvage a regard for her very memory in the end. Damon captures the essence of a grief stricken husband and desperate father, reflecting what the everyday man would likely be going through during such pandemonium.

Burying the dead to prevent further infection.

Audiences have been quick to compare Contagion with Wolfgang Petersen's 1995 film Outbreak, which is a blunder. Aside from the surface plot surrounding a new form of influenza being introduced into the human population, the two films have almost nothing in common. In true Soderbergh-fashion, Contagion highlights numerous characters as they undergo various circumstances and situations, all without ever really centralizing on any one in particular. Ironically, it is a movie about chaos done in a chaotic style that is actually very cohesive. Such an approach has come to be known as "hyperlink cinema" which was originally coined by critic Alissa Quart in her review of Don Roos' Happy Endings for the media journal Film Comment. That movie is an entirely different sort altogether, but the method of multilinear storytelling is the same. Soderbergh has used this approach before, most notably in his crime drama Traffic which won him an Academy Award for Best Director. He takes a very similar approach with Contagion, both stylistically and technically. It explores the human situations during a pandemic through a number of different perspectives: an infectee, a scientist, a controller, an opportunist. We are able to follow various story lines simultaneously while witnessing a progression of fear and uncertainty among the public. Unfortunately, what worked so superbly with Traffic, doesn’t quite peg as gainfully here. It is difficult to emotionally empathize with most of the characters individually because so little is divulged of them or they simply die-off before we can. This premise has the makings of a prime-time television series, if I ever saw one. So we become primarily focused on the overall threat of infection itself. That's all fine and dandy, but hardly the elements of great ensemble piece.

Elliott Gould as Dr. Ian Sussman

Typically financial limitations put restraints on the number of household names that are attached to a project, but when dealing with a Steven Soderbergh film that just doesn't apply. Bringing together such an esteemed cast has come to be somewhat of a Soderbergh-standard (reference his Ocean's trilogy). And Contagion's cast is no exception. And significantly enough, these aren't merely just a bunch of movie stars, they are an array of excellent actors. Among them are three Emmys, four SAG Awards, five Golden Globes, four BAFTA Awards, and four Oscars. Not to mention a variable array of nominations and other awards. Admittedly, this particular ensemble does fit together well. Not one of them dominates the film and they each execute their roles quite reputably, despite how little overall screen time they may have individually. Very few directors can get away with that with such a cast of A-List performers. Because of this, his reputation as being the "modern day Robert Altman" certainly stands true.

It is pretty well known around Hollywood that Soderbergh regularly employs the same cinema-tographer, Peter Andrews, in his films. What is not commonly known is that Peter Andrews and Steven Soderbergh are one in the same. This actually explains a lot about the behind-the-camera methods used in so many of Soderbergh's films. He repeatedly employs a cinematic technique where the camera closely fixes on objects that are contaminated and have become fomites (or carriers) of the virus. It reminded me of Joe Wright's technique in Pride & Prejudice, where he placed particular emphasis on the character's hands and the moments they touched one another with them. Although there it was used to create a romantic sensibility, it has the same kind of effect in Contagion by channeling attentions on an unlikely place. As so categorically pointed out by Dr. Mears, "The average person touches their face three to five times every waking minute. In between that we're touching door knobs, water fountains, and each other." Incorporate a rather thrilling musical score composed by Cliff Martinez, and you're enthralled in the threat of this virus almost instantly. These sequences enlighten the audiences as to just how quickly others can become infected and provides a visual sense that they are experiencing the contamination for themselves. Not to the extent of being real-time per say, but by bringing attention to varying details that unless you have obsessive-compulsive disorder, probably overlook a hundred times a day.

Marion Cotillard as Dr. Leonora Orantes

The scientific accuracy of the film has already been praised in a number of reputable medical journals and by experts. But did this really benefit the movie's overall scheme? That depends on whom you ask. Actual scientific experts and medical professionals were brought onto the set to guide both the crew and the cast during filming. Real-life epidemiologist Dr. W. Ian Lipkin helped with the film's art direction by designing realistic laboratories and plausible viruses. Lipkin also coached the actors on how to properly portray someone with a similar viral disease. This contribution proved to be most useful for Gwyneth Paltrow and everyone else who dies on screen. Probably the most useful contribution made by the film's consultants was how scientific controllers would handle the situation of a pandemic. The reactions and involvement of both local and international governing agencies are well depicted. Academy Award® winner Marion Cotillard plays Dr. Leonora Orantes, an epidemiologist from the World Health Organization who travels to Hong Kong to investigate the origin of the virus. The reiterates the concept that understanding where the virus came from is an important factor in fighting it.

Kate Winslet as Dr. Erin Mears

Officials from the US federal agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), are even more apparent. Being an American film, this comes as no surprise. Scenarios of such magnitude are no stranger to the CDC. Although the organization has only been operating in an official capacity since 1992, its purpose and functions have been in existence since 1940's, when the threat of a malaria outbreak at the offset of World War II was eminent. Instinctively after Beth Emhoff's unexplained death, the director of the CDC Dr. Ellis Cheever (played by Academy Award® nominee  Laurence Fishburne) deploys an epidemic intelligence service officer Dr. Erin Mears (played by Academy Award® winner Kate Winslet) to Minneapolis to investigate. This is a prime example of how the CDC would handle such a pandemic situation in its early stages of terrorem. It is Dr. Mears who is first on site to handle the control of the virus. But contaminating it at this point seems to be a lost cause. Winslet delivers, as she always does, as this compassionate medical scientist. We can believe not only that she is this very knowledgable professional but that she does actually care about the people she is working to save.

Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Ellis Cheever

Naturally, both Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns sought to be as factual as possible. Burns, who is probably best known for the Bourne trilogy, constructs a intricate story of human self-interest. Unfortunately his characters are too broad and underdeveloped, so the underlying plot is weakened because the virus is set up as the focal point and not the people. In the early stages of the script, Warner Brothers hired a consultant to review and critique its general accuracy. Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Laurie Garrett worked closely with Burns throughout his creative process over a exhaustive series of some thirty drafts of the script. Her expertise and experience with such epidemics as the Ebola virus and Anthrax, helped guarantee that the scenarios in Contagion were depicted as realistically as possible. This is big shift for Burns, considering his prior collaboration with Soderbergh and Matt Damon (The Informant!) attempted to find humor in a big business conspiracy scenario, repeat attempted. His other, more prominent effort, The Bourne Ultimatum which also stars Damon was for more resilient. Although being the third film in that series laid stable ground work for any potholes in the storyline. Nonetheless, Burns' script does exploit some outlandish human instincts and unbelievable ignorances. There is a great example of this midway through the film where Dr. Cheever advises his own wife to clear out of their home in Chicago completely before the National Guard places the entire city under quarantine. While he may have known about the pandemic the whole time, it doesn't actually strike him until this moment when he personally relates its threat to his own family. His conversation is overheard by a building janitor named Roger (played by Academy Award® nominee John Hawkes) who berates Dr. Cheever saying, "We have loved ones too." This raises the ethical questions about what is privileged information and just who is privileged to it.

Jude Law as Alan Krumwiede

This brings me to another subplot in the film about an independent journalist who catches wind of the epidemic before anyone else in the general public. When another infectee in Hong Kong suddenly dies on a public bus, a video clip of it is posted online almost immediately thanks to the power of internet-capable cell phones with cameras. Alan Krumwiede, played by Academy Award® nominee Jude Law, sees the incident as a strong lead to a story that is not far-off from the SARS outbreak of 2003. Law brings a weasely tone to his character, making him easy to loath from the start. He pitches his lead to a lowly copy writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, but she hastily disregards both the story and Krumwiede. This sets him loose to the unaccountable genre of blogs (like my own here) where fact and fiction are often hard to differentiate. When the pandemic does go public, the media powers that be approach Krumwiede about using his so-called talents to influence the public in their favor. Krumwiede formulates a conspiracy theory that the CDC is in cahoots with pharmaceutical companies in order to maximize profits by nurturing the demand for a vaccine which he claims already exists. He dubiously posts video footage on his blog of himself being sick, taking an over-the-counter  "cure" called forsythia, and recovering from his infection. This sparks even more hysteria in a presently unruled population, as people seek out forsythia in acts of desperation to survive. Managing to turn the masses, who have deemed him a new age "prophet", against the government . This does enlighten to a reality that people should be cautious about accepting information from so-called news sources that are not immediately accountable to anyone else but themselves. If there is any villain in this movie besides the MEV-1 virus, Krumwiede is it.

Jennifer Ehle as Dr. Ally Hextall

Finding a real vaccine lies at the heart of the story. Early on, Dr. Ian Sussman, played by Academy Award® nominee Elliott Gould, is commissioned by the CDC to unravel the virus itself. He does make progress by discovering a line of bat cells that will support an agent against the virus, but is ordered to discontinue his research and destroy all live samples when the outbreak escalates. Meanwhile, CDC scientist Dr. Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) is racing to find a cure as well. The breakthroughs of Dr. Sussman lead her to characterize the virus as being derived from a breed of genetic material of known bat and pig viruses. She too is on the brink of discovering a cure, but the bureaucracy behind any kind of experimentation on human subjects delays substantial progress. This presents an entirely different theme of the film that reflects how our own laws and governing procedures can work against us. Virology expert Dr. Paul Offit has cited "Contagion" to be refreshing and loyal, stating that "Typically when movies take on science, they tend to sacrifice the science in favor of drama. That wasn't true here." As a matter of fact, it is quite the opposite; the drama was sacrificed for the science. Since the majority of the public are neither doctors nor scientists, this contrary approach may have been a blunder on Soderbergh’s part. This is a fictional account after all, not a documentary. So while it may be very true-to-life and scientifically accurate, it only lightly scratches the surface of the being a prominent melodrama. With all the varying subplots and circumstances going on, Contagion probably would have made a better television series.

It is interesting to see so many perspectives of people and how the public might react to such a pandemic. While there were some strong plot points, for the most part the array of subplots don't come together. There isn't much that ties the characters to each other or to the audience besides that they are all at risk of dying from this virus. More could have been done to emphasize them as individuals. It is far too emotionally detached from these characters and too frequently it feels like you're watching CNN and not a theatrical movie. We hardly care whether any of these people survive. Soderbergh remains true to his cinematic style and has created a visually exciting film, despite its thematic short comings. Contagion invokes some personal thought as to how the world would react to a pandemic of this magnitude. The film depicts both the CDC and the World Health Organization as ultimately being the "good guys". Which itself is surprising, considering that so many other films of this nature have been so anti-government. But even more importantly, reminds us that people are inherently good. Under such life threatening circumstances, just how righteous would you be?

Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
Bottom Line: Despite it's phlegmatic multitude of characters and although it fails to invoke audience endearments, it succeeds in its true-to-life portrayal of a global pandemic.


Cliff Martinez: "They're Calling My Flight"