Contagion (2011) —- a review

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Contagion is like a mini-series that has been chopped down to movie length. It is about a worldwide epidemic caused by a mysterious agent that covers the globe quickly. The storytelling is Steven Soderbergh-ish which is neither good or bad. It just reminds you of the award-winning director’s other recent films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic  and Ocean’s Eleven through Thirteen.

Though the film itself is uneven, I was impressed by the cast, some in small roles. Matt Damon is effective as a husband and father whose world comes apart suddenly. So is Gwyneth Paltrow as a woman whose secret has dire consequences. Kate Winslet is very good as a dedicated investigator. Lawrence Fishburn is also on target as the head of the unit at the Centers for Disease Control. Elliott Gould stands out as a maverick MD-researcher very believable but suddenly dropped. He brings a quirkiness to the film that it needs. Jude Law is OK as a journalist who seems to be everywhere but I’m not sure what you are supposed to think of him.The autopsy scenes are well-researched. (I’ve been there and done that.) So is the CDC stuff. Someone has done their homework.

The Marion Cotilliard kidnapping sequence however is expendable, though she is an actress you can’t take your eyes off while she is on the screen. At the screening I attended, a few scenes made the audience laugh inappropriately. Cramming all this into a short time frame has its hazards. Though it tries to show mass panic and world anarchy, you don’t really believe it. It all looks like it was done on a sound stage and computer. The supermarket looting scenes are stock movie-of-the-week stuff.  You get the epidemiology at the end, that’s nice, but it all rushes off in a blur. It would have been more effective as a mini-series, where they could have taken more time with each connecting story and the all inherent issues.

The little bits of human behavior like the CDC doctor bringing his girlfriend to Atlanta, the maverick investigator isolating his own specimen, the researcher inoculating herself at the identification of the immune monkey etc. helped humanize the film. They are very contemporary touches. These scenes would have been different in 1940 when Hollywood made Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet with Edward G Robinson. The moral framework has shifted and maybe frayed. That’s part of the story.

If you wish to get the outline of what a bird flu epidemic might look like, this gives you at least the general gist.

Tom Godfrey

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