Pandemic Nuts and Bolts
Some of the things that generally go on in movies about a contagious epidemic are how it spreads, the symptoms, the advanced stages of frothing and convulsing, the one immune person who can’t catch it, the quarantining, the hazmat suits, the isolating of its origin, the suspicious talk of some country having “weaponized” it, the frantic search for its vaccine, the mass panic, and the deployment of the National Guard. There’s an unavoidable, “seen one, seen ’em all” aspect of virus-outbreak movies.
“Contagion” opens with Gwyneth Paltrow’s character exhibiting symptoms. The camera looks suspiciously at places of human contact: subway poles, sipped drinks, indiscreet public coughing, and so on.
Paltrow’s bits are among the film’s creepiest, since, award-winning actress that she is, she looks rather horrifyingly convincing while in the throes of advanced symptoms. She also does an excellent job of looking extremely dead.
Also of note is Jude Law’s character, Alan Krumwiede, who appears to be a version of the assassin he played in “Road to Perdition.” He drives most of the more interesting plot lines as a conspiracy-theory journalist-blogger looking to sniff out sinister government involvement in the virus’s spread.
His ideas are a bit too all-over-the-place, and he’s eventually reprimanded by Elliott Gould’s brilliant research doctor with the excellent line, “Blogging is not writing! It’s graffiti with punctuation!”
Nevertheless, a mirroring of the physical epidemic is shown in the proliferation of hordes of people (12 million) flocking to Krumwiede’s website for answers, thus creating a panic pandemic.
We never really find out if the government is trying to pull a stunt similar to one by the “James Bond” villain Goldfinger, who intended to detonate a small atomic bomb in Fort Knox, thus rendering all the gold radioactive and thereby sending his personal gold stock through the roof.
If everyone’s dying and the government has the only vaccine …
Who knows what’s going on? It’s left ambiguous. It demonstrates how a fear pandemic can be just as insidious and dangerous as an actual virus. In a quote from the film’s press notes, Soderbergh says, “This film could do for elevator buttons and doorknobs what ‘Jaws’ did for going to the beach.”
Catching Up to COVID
Since my original review, I’ve gone from appreciating “Contagion” as a thriller to no longer wanting to be thrilled about a pandemic. I want answers. So does everyone else, judging by the number of viewings it’s receiving, and that’s probably due to the fact that the science in “Contagion” is by and large grounded in reality.SARS happened, apparently, through some kind of human contact with bats. The disease in “Contagion” starts with the bats and adds pigs. Interestingly, it’s always starting someplace in China.
Hopefully, this type of inner reflection becomes highly contagious and widespread before it’s too late.
