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Laurence Fishburne leads the drive to fight a pandemic in Soderbergh's outbreak thriller Contagion |
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Marion Cotillard (Dr Leonara Orantes), Matt Damon
(Mitch Emhoff), Laurence Fishburne (Dr Ellis Cheever), Jude Law (Alan
Krumwiede), Gwyneth Paltrow (Beth Emhoff), Kate Winslet (Dr Erin Mears),
Jennifer Ehle (Dr Ally Hextall), Elliott Gould (Dr Ian Sussman), Chin Han (Sun
Feng), Bryan Cranston (Rear Admiral Lyle Haggerty), John Hawkes (Roger), Enrico
Colantoni (Dennis French)
It’s a fear that has gripped the world several times this
century: the pandemic that will wipe us all out. It’s the theme of Steven
Soderbergh’s impressively mounted epidemic drama, which mixes in an astute commentary
on how the modern world is likely to respond to an event that could herald the
end of times.
Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a businesswoman flying back
to Minneapolis from Hong Kong (with a stopover in Chicago for a bit of
rumpy-pumpy with an ex-boyfriend) who becomes Patient Zero for an outbreak of a
virulent strain of swine and bat flu that proves near fatal for the immune
system. While her stunned husband Mitch (Matt Damon) is immune, most of the
population aren’t. Across the world, health organisations swing to action –
from Dr Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and Dr Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle)
at the CDC, to Dr Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) running things on the ground in
Minneapolis to Dr Leonara Orantes (Marion Cotillard) investigating for the WHO
in Switzerland and Hong Kong. As populations panic, conspiracy-theorist blogger
Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) sees this as an opportunity for personal promotion
and enrichment.
Soderbergh’s clinical filming approach makes for a
chillingly realistic piece of cinema
realitie, possibly one of the director’s finest films in his oddly-uneven
career. Soderbergh presents events as they are, laying out the film like a
giant Pandemic board. Captions
regularly tell us what day we are on from initial outbreak, as well as the
populations of the various cities the plot lands us in. The film is shot with a
documentary lack of fussiness, and largely avoids either sensationalism or the
sort of Hollywood virus clichés of films like Outbreak. It also succeeds in largely avoiding heroes or villains
(even the usual baddies for this sort of film, Big Phama companies, are shown
as part of a potential solution not the problem) – even the outbreak is largely
an act of chance, prompted by mankind’s actions, but there is no reveal that
shady suits or military types are behind it all.
Watching the film today in the light of Brexit and Trump it
actually appears strikingly profound and prescient in its depiction of the
knee-jerk paranoia and wilful blindness of internet and media pundits who
believe every opinion is equal and valid regardless of expertise. Alan
Krumwiede (a slightly pantomime performance from Jude Law, complete with bad
hair, bad teeth and an Aussie accent perhaps intended to echo Julian Assange)
all but denounces the views of experts as “fake news”, claims his opinions on
the causes and treatment of the disease are as valid as the expert
professionals (all but saying “I think we have had enough of so-called
experts”), uses his unique hit count as evidence for the validity of his (bogus)
conspiracy theories and makes a fortune peddling a snake-oil natural cure which
he claims saved his life (and leads to millions of people ignoring the proper
precautions and treatments recommended by the WHO and CDC).
Soderbergh shows that this sort of crap is as much a dangerous
pandemic as the disease itself, encouraging an atmosphere of fear and hostility.
At the time it just seemed a bit snide to say “a blog is not writing, it’s
graffiti with punctuation”, but today, as websites spout up presenting all
sorts of horseshit as legitimate fact, this film looks more and more ahead of
the curve in its analysis of a public disillusioned and untrusting of
authorities can turn their attention and trust to a venal liar who claims to be
a tribune of the people, but is interested only in lining his own pocket.
But then that’s one of this film’s interesting psychological
points. If there is an antagonist in this film, it’s human nature itself. The
“wisdom of crowds” is continuously a dangerous thing, as areas devolve into
rioting and looting. The bureaucracy of local and international governments
causes as many problems as the disease: even as bodies pile up in Minneapolis,
Kate Winslet’s on-site CDC crisis manager must bat away furious lackeys of the
State Governor, demanding to know if the federal government will cover the
extra medical precautions. Announcements of public danger are pushed back until
after Thanksgiving, so as not to have a negative impact on the holiday. The
decent Dr Cheever, who unwisely leaks news of a lockdown of Chicago to his
fiancée, is thrown to the dogs by the government who need some sort of
scapegoat they can blame the whole mess on.
If our enemies are red tape and the selfish rumour-mongering
of the unqualified and the self-important, acts of heroism here are generally
rogue moments of rule-benders. A scientist at a private pharmaceutical company
continues his work after being ordered to destroy his samples (and then shares
his crucial findings about the disease with the world, free of charge). CDC
scientist Ally Hextall tests a crucial antibody on herself because there simply
isn’t time to go through the lengthy trials needed (needless to say Krumwiede
uses this as further evidence that the outbreak is a government stitch-up).
Alongside all this, Soderbergh’s detailed direction and
editing chillingly chart the spread of the disease. Having explained carefully
how it can be spread by touch, the camera details every move of infected
people, carefully lingering for half a second on every touched item, with the
implication clear that everyone else who will touch these objects soon (such as
door handles) will themselves become infected. The film pulls no punches in
showing the grim effects of the disease (poor Gwyneth Paltrow!) and the
resulting chaos as the pandemic progresses, with social structure breaking
down, chaos only held in check by mobilising army forces and imposing curfews
and a national lottery for cure distribution, with areas off-limits for those
not carrying a wristband barcode identifying them as inoculated.
Soderbergh assembles a fine cast for this drama, helping to
put human faces to characters who often have to spout reams of scientific and
medicinal dialogue. Fishburne is particularly good as a noble and reasonable
head of the CDC, who succumbs only once to putting his loved ones first. Matt
Damon is the face of “regular joes” as a father going to any lengths to protect
his last surviving child. As one reviewer said the “undercard” of the cast is
particularly strong, with Jennifer Ehle perhaps the outstanding performer as
the eccentrically driven CDC research scientist. Cranston, Gould, Han, Hawkes
and Colantoni are also equally fine.
Soderbergh’s film was a bit overlooked at the time, but
rewatching it again, the more I think it might be strikingly intelligent
analysis of our modern world, ahead of its time in understanding how new media
and human nature can interact with government and society, and how this can
lead to a spiralling in times of crisis. One of his best.
Scary for the time, but it's real life now. Sad. The photo of folks wearing masks really strikes home. I hate when pop culture inadvertently predicts the future. Why us, God...?
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