Contagion, 2011
About a week after my school closed due to COVID, I ended up watching
Outbreak just out of, I don't know, some weird sense of masochism? Or maybe for the comfort of saying, "Well, at least it's not THAT bad."
I had some similar feelings watching this film, in which an unfaithful wife, Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), manages to trigger a global outbreak of a respiratory virus that quickly kills its victims. The film juggles a half dozen subplots, a few of which overlap, following Beth's husband (Matt Damon) who struggles to keep their daughter safe; workers for the CDC and WHO (Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet); a corrupt conspiracy-theory blogger (Jude Law); a research scientist (Eliot Gould); and others.
The most interesting part of the film for me was the scientific stuff: the steps of sequencing the virus and trying to come up with a vaccine. I was only moderately engaged by the whole "society breaking down" element--soldiers refusing to let people leave their state, people looting grocery stores, etc. Though there is a part where Damon's character goes to the grocery store where most people are wearing masks, and a woman without a mask coughs right on him and I was like . . . yup.
It's interesting watching this film and comparing it to our current pandemic reality. The virus of the film is a lot deadlier than COVID (much like
Outbreak, contracting the virus seems to be a death sentence) and the social collapse in the film is rapid.
The main selling point of the film, in my opinion, is the way that Soderbergh moves his camera, and what he keeps on and off screen. He does a great job of building suspense, so that a cough from off-camera immediately raises our concern. There are some really great tracking shots conveying the spread of the virus, and he alternates close ups and far away shots in an interesting way.
It should also be mentioned that the cast in this film consists of seemingly every actor ever. In addition to the ones I already mentioned there were probably another dozen big name actors. This gives an interesting flexibility to the film, because it can kill off two or three A-list actors and still has another handful of them kicking around.
Ultimately I felt that the "many narrative arcs" approach kept me a bit at arm's distance. And there were three narratives that just . . . didn't resolve? Or maybe their final moments were cut for time? Damon's bewildered yet determined father and Jennifer Ehle's similarly determined medical researcher were probably my favorites in terms of connecting with them.
Anyway, if you like feeding your anxiety, or if you'd like to be able to say, "Yeah, I can't go to a concert, but at least the trash is still getting picked up!", you might check this one out.