Reposted from September 25, 2011

It figures a week after I've seen CONTAGION, director Steven Soderbergh's latest ensemble film, I come down with a cold and a slight cough. Nothing that can't be cured easily with two gel capsules and a glass of water, mind you; however, being sick this week did cause me to pause about the circumstances of my situation.

My dumb cold is nothing compared to the shellacking that Gwyneth Paltrow's character goes through within the first 20 minutes of the film: Rushed to the emergency room by hubby Matt Damon, Paltrow goes bug-eyed, convulses, and flatlines. Yep, Our Lady of GOOP goes down in the first half of the film. Much of Contagion is straight to the point with a sledgehammer, but the stakes are never so much higher as soon as Soderbergh kills off one of its leading stars.

Similar to the multi-threaded storytelling seen in TRAFFIC, CONTAGION tracks a global epidemic in multiple locales across 90-minutes-or-so. One death becomes three, three become nine, and so on, until governments begin panicking, big pharma clasps its hands in anticipation, and the CDC works day and night looking for a cure. Soderbergh deftly avoids the usual plot contrivances and lavish expenses that plague most disaster flicks, choosing to go for brisk montages of society breaking down as people loot Rite Aids for medicine, corpses piling in the street, and long lines at hospitals.

And the talking! If there ever was a film that avoids sloppy expostion, this is it. There's never a moment in CONTAGION where I felt the characters reduced their dialogue to a Cliff Notes pamphlet. At one point, Jennifer Ehle and Laurence Fishburne--both playing a scientist and the head honcho of the CDC respectively--have a sit-down to discuss a mutation in the virus. It's probably the most compelling dramatic scene I've seen this year, if nothing else but to hear the excitement and terror in Ehle's voice as she describes changes in the contagion's pattern and Fishburne calmly nodding in agreement.

CONTAGION is intelligent--in some ways, almost overthinking itself. We need more films like it (and not another Roland Emmerich bloatfest), and we need more directors like Soderbergh who are willing to put their roots from independent "art" films into big-budget genre films.

And if nothing else, you can blame the deaths of 12 million people or so on Gwyneth Paltrow.

This film is close to being a hybrid between a documentary and fictional tale. It is also an ensemble cast which can be difficult to pull off but this movie manages it. Basically, a very lethal virus sweeps the world, turning into a pandemic. There is HUGE loss of life until a vaccine is developed. The first case which brings it into the USA is Gwyn Paltrow who flies home from Asia to Minnesota. Within a very short time of being home with a cold, she goes into convulsions, is taken to the hospital and dies. Her son goes next and is replicates at swift speed after that. I never once felt that this was a science fiction film or one of these comic book based action films. It seemed to develop exactly as such a pandemic would develop around the world.

There is an all star cast. It would be nice to have more screen time for some of them but then we'd miss getting the bigger picture. People do panic, loot, try to escape, kidnap people for vaccine trades and so forth and so on.

There is a trade off for all of this reality and ensemble acting. That is that you never really come to care about anyone or want to explore their stories further. You do feel sorry for Paltrow's husband, Matt Damon, and his daughter, who are left to deal with their own tragedy. However, his character would have to be onscreen a lot longer for one to really work up a connection with his character.

For what this film is, it is very well done and very good.

CONTAGION, directed by Steven Soderbergh, is an intensely frightening look at what really could happen should a new and unidentified virus begin to spread globally. Unfortunately, it's not a very successful film. What makes it work is its documentary-style script, which takes viewers through the spread of the virus, the reaction of both governments and everyday people, and the fear that ends up possessing the world. What makes it unsuccessful is actually the same thing - the documentary style of the film makes it almost impossible to become emotionally connected to any of the characters, most of which are played by people we know and want to care about. Because Soderbergh keeps us so detached from his characters, CONTAGION never quite jells as a truly gripping thriller.

Gwyneth Paltrow plays Beth Emhof, whose business trip to Hong Kong ends up infecting her (and a lot of other people) with a mysterious and deadly virus. Her husband Mitch (Matt Damon), back home in Minneapolis, is inexplicably immune to the disease, and his horror at what happens to his wife and young step-son is palpable and gut-wrenching. Unfortunately, we see so little of Mitch (and even less of Beth) that it's hard to stay connected. Kate Winslet plays CDC doctor Erin Mears, and for a while we get caught up in her race to unravel the mysteries of this terrible virus. But the film jumps so methodically from Dr. Mears to her boss, Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne), to World Health Organization investigator Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) - and it's hard to keep up, much less get invested in these characters. On top of that, there's a very involved sub-plot about a self-serving Internet journalist (Jude Law) who mouths off about unsavory political connections between the CDC/WHO and the pharmaceutical companies, while he's trying to push a homeopathic remedy that could make him a multi-millionaire. There's also a kidnapping plot, lots of scenes of people gone amok, and a very quick resolution to the virus that is neither comprehensible nor particularly satisfying.

Parts of CONTAGION are downright mesmerizing, and there's no doubt Soderbergh knows how to push the panic buttons of moviegoers already worried about H1N1, AIDS, and the latest strain of flu. I just wanted to feel more of a connection to Damon's Mitch, or Winslet's Erin Mears, or Fishburne's Cheever, or Cotillard's Leonora. Soderbergh ends CONTAGION with the kind of lack of closure that will either infuriate its audience or confirm the ultimate reality of its subject matter. Don't expect to find out what happens to everyone . . . or anyone, for that matter. Then again, maybe Soderbergh did us all a favor by keeping us distanced from his characters and not allowing us to actually wrap our proverbial arms around them. It's easier to forget about them that way. And this is definitely a film you won't want to keep thinking about in the wee hours of the morning.