CONTAGION

Somebody didn't even survive the poster.

This film is for adults.  That doesn't mean it has any cursing, or nudity, or violence.  It means this is a smart picture.  There are no car chases, gunfights, sexy spyjinks, contrived back stories, adorable animal sidekicks, plucky comic relief, and no extensive buildup for our 'heroic' main character who will save the day by picking up the virus and throwing it off the top of the Nakatomi Tower.  In fact, as the title hints, the main character is the virus.  Everyone else is a supporting character in what could best be called a viral-procedural.  We have the first victim, her family, some CDC officials, some WHO officials, the military, the DHS, a janitor, and a fear-mongering blogger.  Who will survive and what will be left of them?

The film belongs to a genre I'm quite fond of that I refer to as the human fallibility genre.  Films as diverse as Zodiac or A Bridge Too Far or a third example I can't think of show us that it's not one mistake that changes history, it's the combined effects of literally countless mistakes, made by an immeasurable number of people across unknowable distances.  As soon as you think you've planned every possible detail for your party this weekend, your house burns down the day before.  The film respects your intelligence enough to generally eschew cliches and present a viral pandemic story that stands out from potboilers and action movies that hinge on the same concept.

You expect that human error will explain the spread of the disease, and of course it does in many ways, but it also greatly impacts the treatment.  A medical researcher played by Elliot Gould is given a sample very early on, before the true scope and danger is comprehended, and later ordered to destroy it, once the CDC determines that letting civilians work with the virus is too risky.  But Gould secretly disobeys, keeps testing, and ends up saving everybody's bacon when he figures out how to replicate the virus, a necessary first step in the testing that can eventually lead to a vaccine.  Human fallibility isn't really bad or good; it's just a natural law, like gravity, that effects every situation.

Be warned: you might learn something in this film.  The dialogue is jargon-heavy and no layman character ever needs to be caught up for the benefit of the audience.  I learned what an R0 is, and I learned that vaccines are now apparently done in the nose.  Science!  I also learned that Soderbergh and his RED camera prove that it's the filmmaker that matters more than his tools; despite being shot with a 'digital' camera and not on actual film, this is a very filmy film, by which I mean beautifully shot and composed with attention to detail and color present in all the shots. 

Even a quick scene of bureaucrats meeting in an office looks more realistic, less generic, and more interesting than every other boring Hollywood 'office of exposition' scene.  All of the shots of objects that might infect you (there are tons) are achieved without zooms or dollies or special effects to draw your attention to the object.  Once you hear Kate Winslet rattle of statistics about what people touch and how often they touch it, you won't need any guidance to notice every surface as a potential infection point.  The doorknobs, pens, coins, credit-cards, and free nut dishes of the world all linger ominously on the edges of the frames, just waiting for an unsuspecting victim to extend their grasp.

I'm surprised that the studio didn't aim for an R-rated film to make it clearer that kids don't run the risk of being traumatized by this film, only the risk of being bored by its efficient plotting and dispassionate omniscient perspective.  I'm also surprised by one moment that seems a bit gruesome for PG-13.  I don't think this counts as a spoiler because it happens in the trailer for the film, and very early on in the actual film itself, but Gwyneth Paltrow dies.  We get an obstructed view of her autopsy, no blood or brains or bones in sight, but we do get to see her scalp pulled down over her face as they go in for the brain.

Jude Law plays what might be the most accurate blogger ever put on film, so its kind of a shame that he's basically the only villain.  It's not a case study in realism, but it's far better than other films with cavernous website offices and countless employees who look too old to properly operate a computer.  Law is a conspiracy theorist, and just as a hammer sees every problem as a nail, Law detects vast conspiracies between the government and pharmaceutical companies at every stage of the epidemic, and he's armed with just enough random historical factoids to convince himself that anyone who disagrees with him is a bought-and-sold collaborator with... 'them.'  He's even more dangerous once he exposes some credible information; if he was right about that one thing, hypothetical people think, then maybe he's right about all that other stupid bullshit he said.

Law convinces people that homeopathy, and not vaccines, is the way to save themselves, and the government comes to suspect that's because he's a major investor in a natural medicine company that produces the supposed miracle cure.  Good for the filmmakers making an anti-vaccine advocate the villain of the story.  They're too stupid to even come with up good conspiracy theories.  Why would companies try to scam people with vaccines?  You only get them once, and they're not very expensive.  What about the billions of pills people take every single day of their adult lives?  Blood pressure medicine, cholesterol medicine, pain pills, anti-depressants, allergy medicine.  That's where the money is!  I shouldn't be telling them this.  Now I'll start hearing rumors about the great 'claritin conspiracy' and know that I have no one to blame but myself.

The fear-mongering aspect deals with the theme of the movie that panic is just as deadly as disease.  We expect riots and piles of bodies in shallow graves, but this film has some unexpected developments up its sleeve.  Once the virus hits the news, certain unions that deal extensively with the public start calling in strikes or work stoppages.  If the disease isn't already enough of a threat, things get much worse when cops, nurses, garbagemen, and transit employees start barricading themselves in their homes.  The film even calls out previous media disease-panics for reducing readiness/acceptance.  People start to think 'if the bird flu, H1N1, the swine flu, SARS and the turtle flu turned out to be over-hyped non-threats, maybe this one will blow over too.'  No such luck.

There's a very effective scene, subtle and understated, that illustrates how things fall apart.  Matt Damon hears a loud noise outside his house.  He looks in his neighbors windows and sees bright flashes and hears more loud blasts.  Unmistakably gunfire.  He sees masked gunmen fleeing the home.  He calls 911.  He's connected to a recorded message that basically says 'have fun dying sorry k bye.'  The gunmen don't appear to be stealing anything, and they vanish just as quickly as they appeared without bothering any other houses.  It's just another random event to stress out Matt Damon and give chills to the audience.

This film has a cast to die for and nobody hogs the spotlight.  The three lovely ladies billed on the poster are all Academy Award winners for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard) and the men are no slouches either; Matt Damon and Jude Law are perpetual acting nominees (Damon won for co-writing Good Will Hunting) and Laurence Fishburne, who I think might have the most screen time of any character but I wouldn't bet on it, started his career with quality work in Apocalypse Now (he lied about his age to appear in a production that could have traumatized lesser teenagers) and has been delivering under-appreciated performances. 

Forget The Matrix sequels (then tell me how) and just remember The Matrix.  Laurence Fishburne dominates that part in a way that a more famous actor couldn't dream of.  Before Fishburne signed onto the part of Morpheus, the studio was considering people like Sean Connery, which tells you just how different a character was being conceived at the time.  Larry Fishburne was in a Freddy Krueger movie and he lived!  That man doesn't get enough respect.

I recognized actor Chin Han right away but couldn't place him; then I finally realized, as I often do, that he was in The Dark Knight as the squealer-banker Lau who flees to Hong Kong.  Even the minor parts are packed with ringers.  Bryan Cranston, Enrico Colantoni, John Hawkes, Demetri Martin, Sanaa Lathan and others all play small but significant roles and invest enough in their characters that they don't come across as broad sketches or stereotypes.  The film has a few of those though; some bureaucrats do nothing but complain to Kate Winslet that her attempts to stop the virus are too heavy-handed and too expensive.  'Can't you save the world cheaper, lady?'

Another unusual but most appreciated touch is that the real protagonist of the film emerges over time.  We start with Matt Damon, because his character's wife was the first victim and because he has a family to protect and because he's a big handsome movie star, but he doesn't get more attention than he deserves.  It's a CDC researcher played by Jennifer Ehle, who hardly even leaves her Atlanta office, who becomes out unlikely hero.  She shares a touching moment with her source of inspiration, her general practitioner father who risks his own life and refuses to stop treating the sick, that's probably the best example of the way that the clever script by Scott Z. Burns (who also wrote Soderbergh's The Informant!) develops and deepens its characters without devoting more than a few scant minutes to them.

Some of the characters just sort of vanish from the story as it progresses, and not even because they die, it's just the nature of the beast.  Once we know what Elliot Gould contributed to the plot, we unfortunately don't get to check back in with him from time to time.  There are too many other characters that are still central to the story.  This film made me think that if something like this ever really happened, and then they made a movie about years later, this approach would probably work best.  There's no time to dawdle, and the story just keeps on chugging forward, aided by the momentum-maintaining score from Cliff Martinez.

Remember the lat big movie like this?  Outbreak?  Did we ever thank Ebola for that movie?  I haven't seen it in a while (sorry TNT) but it pales in comparison to this because of the structure of its story.  It's really the story of Dustin Hoffman's divorce from Rene Russo, and how some military action and laboratory yelling brings them back together.  The movie even has time for some lame-ass comedy about Hoffman being butt-hurt that he lost his dog in the divorce.  Wait, why is that funny?  Who in the fuck wouldn't be upset to lose a pet in a separation?  It would have been funny if it was a goldfish.  But a dog? To quote Waylon Smithers "people like dogs sir."

Does this movie start with lame dog divorce comedy?  Nope.  While the screen is still black, we hear a single noise that might as well be the whole movie encapsulated: a cough.  The scope is international, with attention paid to Hong Kong, Macau, San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Geneva and a few other places I'm sure I forgot, but the story saves it's best secret until the end.  The chronology of the film runs from day two of the pandemic up through months later, and it's only at the end that we are treated to the events of day one; the banality of the source of the outbreak serves as a perfect ironic punchline for the film.  This isn't a film for people who see connections where none exist (apophenia) but instead a film for people who can appreciate the laughable simplicity with which human events can derail.  You don't need a conspiracy; just a handshake.

For your consideration.

~ If I could review the film with only one word, it would either be 'cough' or 'smart'.

~ Before this Steven Soderbergh picture began, there was a preview for another Soderbergh movie during the coming attractions.  An action movie called Haywire starring an MMA fighter and a bunch of talented actors.  Guess who stands out?  The film is being dumped in January, which could lead to a 'big fish small pond' type success.

~ Demetri Martin is a castaway from Soderbergh's version of Moneyball that the studio declined to make; Jonah Hill replaced him in the more conventional, less Soderberghy version that opens later this month.

~ I was reminded of The Day Of The Jackal when watching this, which I thought was because I just re-watched it a few weeks ago.  But then lo and behold, I read an interview with Steven Soderbergh where he mentions, wait for it, The Day Of The Jackal.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should go watch The Day Of The Jackal.

~ The credits list a dialect coach for Kate Winslet.  Does she still need one?  I don't think so.  When she talks about Taco Bell in this movie, she sounds just like any other red-blooded American quick-taco enthusiast, such as Mike Huckabee's son who once joked "there's not a Huckabee alive that can eat at Taco Bell for [under] seven dollars."

~ Sure everybody is too pretty, but the film's commitment to realism is commendable.  From IMDB: "A scene where female virologist injects herself was re-shot at the suggestion of a consultant because her character was inappropriately shown to be wearing tights."

~ Smart and emotionally detached?  Did I miss a chance to refer to a film as Kubrickian?  Well how about this very un-Kubrick quote from the interview with Soderbergh: "I'm trying to figure out how few shots I can do it in, not how many."

~ My friend Jon saw this movie being filmed in San Francisco and informed a confused old man that a building with a prop sign declaring itself 'Federal Building' was not in fact a federal building of any kind, but rather the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.  The completed film does not have any shots of the sign, which made me (and nobody else) chuckle a little.

~ Coughsmart!