A few weeks ago I went to see the movie Contagion, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Jude Law. The movie details a worldwide unidentified virus that kills millions and spreads rapidly. I wanted to see this film because it is entirely plausible that something like this could happen in our interconnected world.
According to imdb.com, Steven Soderbergh's two most successful films are Erin Brokovich and Traffic, both released in 2000. These two films earned him twin nominations for Best Picture at the Academy Awards; Traffic took home the Oscar. Contagion is a great movie to add onto Soderbergh's list of well-crafted dramas. It is a thriller detailing the spread of a lethal airborne virus and the frantic efforts of the CDC to locate its origin and, most importantly, develop a vaccine. The film's tagline is "Nothing spreads like fear." Though the movie was somewhat slow-moving, it built up a little fear in me as I realized that the surfaces we touch and the air we breathe are teeming with germs.
Contagion is similar to Soderbergh's earlier film Erin Brokovich in that both of them involve serious health threats. Erin Brokovich is the true story of a legal assistant who brings justice to the people of a small town who are being sickened by their polluted drinking water. Contagion is also similar to this film because both feature strong female main characters; Julia Roberts is the star in Erin Brokovich, and Kate Winslet has a prominent role in Contagion as a CDC medic who attempts to track down all individuals who may have been exposed to the virus. However, Contagion is in an entirely different arena of films than Erin Brokovich. Contagion is definitely more of a thriller.
This film reflects a possible ramification of our society's interconnectedness. The huge amount of people who die from the virus is only possible because people are so mobile now and interact with many people throughout the day. This film also reflects a trend in our culture with regards to health scares. The bird flu and the swine flu caused mass panic, and turned out to be not as dangerous as we thought. People will always be scared of something like this happening, and Contagion shows that if it did occur there would be chaos. I think everybody is the target audience for this film because health is something that every person values and tries to protect.
A strength in this movie is the acting, and the multiple plot lines. One aspect of the film follows Kate Winslet's character as she tries to locate infected people, another focuses on Matt Damon's character and his daughter as they hole up in their house waiting for the epidemic to pass, and also the CDC's attempts to trace the virus' origins. There is also a plot line in which Jude Law believes he has found the cure, and misleads people into believing him. Unfortunately, a glaring weakness in this movie was that it just fell flat for me. I think it had the potential to be far more involved and produce an edge-of-your-seat reaction. I would have liked to have seen more detail given to the chaos that forms when there is a mass panic and people make a run on stores for supplies. Overall, this film was medium for me. I enjoyed it and it made me think about what would happen if this occurred in real life, but it could have used more excitement.
Robert Ebert gave Contagion 3 stars and felt that it succeeded in developing the scientific aspects of the film; I agree with him. While this film does make you think twice about shaking a stranger's hand, I don't think it will be remembered as an epic blockbuster. This is not Steven Soderbergh's best film, but it does showcase his talent as a director in the thriller and drama genres.
Beyond writing this blog post I engaged with this subject by looking up the Spanish flu, which is mentioned in the film. Contagion is a film that I would recommend to friends because it's entertaining and shows how a single instance of infection can spread worldwide and kill millions. By doing this critique I learned how to delve deeper into a film and really see what I liked and didn't like about it, without giving away major plot twists.
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