The Med City Movie Guy: Let's Talk Genres

Contagion

The irony of Contagion, the new bio-thriller from director Steven Soderbergh, is that this story of a virus as deadly as it is easily transmitted, is told to an audience crowded in a theater. Indeed, I knew this one resonated when, halfway through, someone several rows behind me coughed and everyone shifted uncomfortably in their seats; one moviegoer even reached into her purse for a small bottle of hand sanitizer, waving it like garlic to ward-off a vampire.

But all of the Purell in the world isn’t a match for what did-in Gwyneth Paltrow, who dies about ten minutes into Contagion from something she brought back from a business trip to Hong Kong. Matt Damon co-stars as her distraught widower who, unlike some 30 million victims, is immune to this new MEV-1 strain. The film follows him coping and trying to function with his daughter in a world that’s fallen prey to panic and snake-oil salesmen.

There is a light: heroes at the Centers for Disease Control, led by Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne), who’re racing for a cure. The CDC’s work is not without danger, though fearless scientists like Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) whom Cheever dispatches to the site of the first outbreak, is well aware of the risks.

Soderbergh exquisitely sets-up Contagion in a matter of only minutes. We know what the film’s about, but as he quick-cuts between routine activities like handing a bartender a charge card or picking-up someone else’s cell phone we realize how vulnerable we all are. With that, it’s immediately engaging. It’s also chilling.

And to some extent, like his 2000 masterpiece, Traffic, there’s also a sense of futility. There is no supervillian, no epic showdown. A vaccine is eventually developed and cryo-frozen for posterity with SARS and H1N1 counterparts. But all is right with the world again only for the time being. There’s no real victory. No final resolution. There will be another battle. Even with — or maybe because of — our abundance of caution, viruses will adapt. That this is not the end of it is the eeriness you take home with you (that and any germs on the armrest of the cinema seat).

Like other Soderbergh films, Contagion is an ensemble piece that manages to let everyone shine without anyone stealing the show. There’s just enough of Damon, Fishburne, Winslet, Elliott Gould, and Jude Law. Though, personally, I would have left Paltrow’s autopsy on the ‘cutting room’ floor.

With or without that gratuitous eew moment, this is an amazing film and a contagious thriller.