CONTAGION

I’m in no way a hypochondriac. I wash my hands after using public transit, and might stay a step or two back from a sick co-worker – but by-and-large, I give my immune system a workout. That said, I find stories of epidemics like CONTAGION truly freaky. They leave you feeling like there’s nowhere to run…they use urban centres like the one I live in as a petri dish for the plot…and worst of all, they are completely possible.

The film begins with Beth Emhoff (Gweneth Paltrow) feeling under the weather as she returns from a business trip to Hong Kong. What at first feels like a nasty flu gets scary fast when Beth suffers a seizure, forcing her husband Thomas (Matt Damon) to rush her to the hospital.

In frighteningly fast order, Beth dies in hospital care, and an autopsy reveals that she was suffering from a sickness that medical experts are both stumped and worried by. Soon others suffer similar fates to Beth – though amazingly, not Thomas – and soon American officials have a medical crisis on their hands.

The epidemic has front line workers like Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) taking great risk with their actions and decisions – both risk to their own well-being, and the world at large. It likewise forces UN groups like The World Health Organization – specifically Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) into action to try and determine the root of the problem.

But all of this hard work could easily be undone, as blogger Alan Kumbridge (Jude Law) feels that it’s the responsibility of people like him to beat the drum of dissent, and demand that officials fess up to the truth…and as you can guess, he doesn’t go about doing any of this quietly, respectfully, or responsibly.
 CONTAGION is hardly the first film to try and rattle us with an epidemic…but it works so well that it can feel like that at times. These are great times we live it: an age where no corner of the world can’t be explored, where health authorities can make policy quickly, and where anyone with a keyboard and a T1 line can get their opinion out to millions with ease. Unfortunately, luxuries like these can also work against us. That’s what makes a situation like what we see in CONTAGION so believable…that’s what makes the film work.

Director Steven Soderbergh has taken a smart tack on the course of this film. Rather than drum up the terror with feverish action or races against a clock, he lets stark images speak for themselves and instil the terror into the audience’s brain. Images like barren city streets…like makeshift trauma wards…like mass graves in western society. These are not the sorts of things we as audiences fathom finding in our home cities, and yet the way CONTAGION makes them plausible is tremendously unsettling.

Upping the ante on that plausibility is the look of this film – which is very grey and unflattering. This muscle is specifically flexed during Beth’s sickness, seizure, and death, giving us a feeling like we are actually there under the harsh, fluorescent hospital lights as she violently meets her end. Using techniques he honed in lesser-seen films like CHE and THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE, Soderbergh is able to give us an untampered image…making some scenes that much more chilling.

Equally unsettling is Alan Krumwiede and his role as a blogger raging against the machine. As the film wryly points out, blogging is still not entirely embraced by academics (I got a grin at Elliott Gould’s character describing it as “Graffiti with punctuation”). Obviously, I don’t believe that blogging doesn’t have merit, but the point cannot be disputed that those doing the blogging aren’t always the most qualified to be advising the readership base. Krumwiede poses a shocking reminder of the responsibility bloggers carry whether they realize it or not. Likewise, he stands as a reminder to we who consume web 2.0 media to take it all with a grain of salt, and now more than ever continue to dig deeper for the truth.

What CONTAGION does best is examine the delicate balance between panic and control in the face of public health. Living in a city that was the centre of a pandemic scare a few years ago, it was eye-opening contrast daily life with the reports being spread (including an economy-crippling travel advisory put out by the W.H.O). People’s natural instinct is to panic – which is what makes deciding when to let the full scope of the truth to light so difficult.

The blending of conceivability and execution makes CONTAGION truly chilling. The film knows that this sort of story comes out of the box freaky enough, and doesn’t feel the urge to make it sexier. It screws us up by sticking to the facts, and sends us scrambling to the nearest drug store for a bottle of Purell.

Matineescore: ★ ★ ★ 1/2 out of ★ ★ ★ ★

What did you think? Please leave comments with your thoughts and reactions on CONTAGION.