Soderbergh's Timely Thriller Forecasts Life in Pandemic
The DVD release cover of “Contagion.” (Image courtesy of IMDB.)
By Michael Omoruan
As the Coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on a worldwide scale, many are looking to the 2011 movie “Contagion” for terrifying deja vu. It is a film that feels less like a Hollywood blockbuster and more like a nail-biting documentary of the present.
The plot feels familiar to anyone surviving the current pandemic: a new virus slowly spreads among people worldwide, starting in Minnesota and London, then all the way to Tokyo.
Directed exceptionally well by Steven Soderbergh and set in the midst of the holiday season, “Contagion” shows how family gatherings multiply the public’s exposure to the virus, a side effect of seasonal travel, allowing it to reach across all corners of the world.
Strong performances from its main and supporting cast bring the film to life.
The standouts are definitely Jude Law’s portrayal of a popular online journalist named Alan Krumwiede, who is looking for answers to how the virus spread so fast, while Ellis Cheever (Lawrence Fishburne), lead member of the CDC, tries his best to contain the situation.
At a crucial moment in the film, when test trials begin to seek a vaccine to combat the virus, the two butt heads and their superb delivery during this climactic encounter will have viewers forgetting that they're watching a film, and not real life.
The film shares many commonalities with the current state of the world, the biggest being the spread of COVID-19.
On a Chinese farm, a bat flies in eating a piece of banana that soon falls in front of a pig. The pig eats it not long before being slaughtered and taken to be prepared by a chef who shakes hands with the main character Beth at the casino she was in, eventually infecting her. According to several reports from the CDC, bats may have been the cause of the coronavirus spreading all over the world.
The film also talks in length about the power of digital media and how online sources are quickly overshadowing print media outlets for spreading information.
Alan Krumwiede runs an online blog called “Truth Serum Now,” which he boasts has over 12 million readers. He taunts a San Francisco Chronicle writer that his blog gets more hits than his paper and will soon put them out of business.
Krumwiede live streams on his site, feigning illness from the virus and uses a holistic oil to “cure” himself, which also felt like a premonition by Soderbergh and Burns. Similarly, radio show host Alex Jones recently promoted his own so-called cure for the coronavirus during a livestream, according to an article by the New Yorker.
Damon’s portrayal of a father slowly watching his world crumble is extremely powerful. Viewers will relate to the escalation of his paranoia as riots ensue when shortages for a newly discovered treatment arises. He panics throughout the film whenever he’s with his daughter Jory as he tries to make sure she doesn't get infected.
Kate Winslet, who plays an epidemiologist researching the spread of the virus, cleverly conveys how dangerous the work of health officials can be, when her character also eventually succumbs to the symptoms of the illness. Marion Cotillard plays Dr. Leonara Orantes, another epidemiologist, who gets abducted by a group of Chinese government officials and used as bait to obtain first access to a cure for their village.
“Contagion” showcases how different facets of society react to a modern pandemic with impressive accuracy. The riot scenes and laboratory scenes with scientists suggest how stressful and overwhelmed many of these essential workers must feel.
It is one of a whole sub-genre of films that deal with novel viruses, among which are “The Flu” in 2013, a South Korean film about an airborne strain of the H5N1 virus in Seoul; “Carriers” in 2009 starring Chris Pine of “Star Trek” fame, about two brothers and friends escaping a virus spread; and “Outbreak” in 1995, a story that stars Dustin Hoffman and Morgan Freeman about a smuggled monkey virus air-spread from into the United States.
Despite the heavy and dark subject matter of “Contagion,” it still ends on a rather optimistic note: the government has begun administering vaccines based on birthdays and begins to call out dates through a lottery-based system, due to the limited supply. Since the film so closely resembles our current reality, I would only suggest watching this if you really enjoy medical dramas/thrillers.
