Dir. Steven Soderbergh, USA / United Arab Emirates , 2011, 106 mins
Cast: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslett, Jude Law
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Movies chronicling the effects of a disease epidemic have spread through moviegoers’ consciousness for the past twenty years. Outbreak , 28 Days Later , and even this month’s Ewan McGregor / Eva Green offering, Perfect Sense , have all dealt with varying degrees of severity of whatever lurgy is threatening the world. So what is it that makesContagion a more feverish prospect?
It’s the poster splattered with A-list names, all under the guidance of a man who knows how to orchestrate an ensemble ( Oceans 11-13 ), Steven Soderbergh. Collectively they could provide the perfect DNA for a quality examination of an increasingly volatile society being tested to its limits, religiously, economically, and ethically.
And to some degree it is an excellent film. Contagion is a no-frills, clinical depiction of what would happen if swine or bird flu had been the global disaster that the media panicked us into believing. It’s cold, fast moving and, Matt Damon’s plot thread aside, has very little time for emotion below the surface level.
Soderbergh gives us numerous strands to follow. Mitch (Damon) has half of his family decimated in one morning after his wife (Paltrow) returns from a business trip in Japan. Dr. Orantes (Cotillard) is sent to the land of the rising sun to trace the timeline of the outbreak, whilst back in the US, Dr. Mears (Winslet) is assigned the task of containing the outbreak by her boss (Fishburne), by setting up a temporary stadium for the sick (paralleling the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina).
And that’s only half the story, so it’s testament to the Traffic director that he manages to juggle all of the threads into a coherent narrative. The story is propelled along with snappy editing and a structure that never allows the film to settle in one time zone for more than five minutes. There are no tedious ‘meet-the-character’ set-ups before the virus finally escapes; the audience is dropped straight into the start of the crisis. We are left to gather what information we can about the characters from the many talky scenes.
Some may find this alienating for a film that’s about mass death, and that’s a valid point. So it’s left to Matt Damon to be the empathic device, which he does very well by presenting the everyman for the viewer to project onto. Others aren’t as successful in their minimal roles, with Jude Law’s wonky Australian accent providing the only amusement in a relentlessly depressing film.
Refreshingly smart, and at times genuinely terrifying, Contagion unfolds like a movie adaptation of a breaking story on Sky News . This recognisable terminology and imagery strikes a cultural chord, but perhaps it’s a little too sterile and superficial in terms of emotional impact to really succeed.
