Contagion is the latest medical pandemic thriller from Hollywood, following in the tradition of Panic in the Streets (1950) and Outbreak (1995). The deja vu factor of Contagion is that it reminded me of the all-star disaster flicks of the 1970s. Then, we were wondering who would die and how spectacularly, and then who would live. In Contagion we wonder who will become sick and who won’t. Really, this type of thing was more fun in the old days.
Even as one in twelve people in the world feel the effects of the central contagion, director Steven Soderbergh keeps panicking histrionics to a bare minimum. Yet, with a cast that includes Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bryan Cranston, Jude Law, Sanaa Lathan, Jennifer Ehle, Elliott Gould and John Hawkes, wouldn’t it have been nice to let some of that pent-up fear, anger and panic explode across the screen? There are glimpses of civilization crumbling, but it never feels immediate or even imperative. The undercurrent of dread is always present, intensifying once in a while to actual apprehension, but for the characters we are following that dread rarely coalesces into anything more palpable than grief for lost loves or lost opportunities.
As a visual jigsaw puzzle in which each piece offers a glimpse as to how people are affected by the outbreak, Contagion is impressive, if not groundbreaking. We see the usual cross-section of scientists and victims, some of whom are heroic, others who merely perish quietly. Jude Law’s conspiracy theorist journalist is probably the most original character. What isn’t included, for once, are scenes of politicians trying to keep order and make “big” decisions. Soderbergh tries very hard to keep the audience on a personal level with these characters, avoiding the “big picture” cliches that come with the territory. Yet, I feel his approach is too cold and calculated to experience as a fundamental, primal force, which is how this material should be felt by an audience. It’s too clinical.
Even so, I am usually intrigued by these apocalyptic tales, and this one is no exception. It should have mirrored the messy, disturbing chaos that would, I believe, ensue in such a situation, but it was interesting nonetheless. Soderbergh’s film is on the money when it insists that despite our technologies and our methodologies and our sophistication, modern civilization remains incredibly vulnerable to what we don’t know and we cannot control in our natural world. The film can be read as a treatise against globalization as well as a cautionary tale regarding how fragile and self-contradictory the medical research infrastructure really is about such organic threats to our way of life. Above all, of course, it is meant as entertainment — and is in that realm that the film falls a little bit short of its ambitions. ✰ ✰ 1/2. 13 Sept. 2011.