Movie Review: Contagion

Directed by Steven Soderbergh. 2011.

*Spoiler Warning*

The structure of Contagion must have scared a few producers. Nothing else can explain why A-list actors fill the supporting roles of this movie. They are well-filled, to be sure, though not one is particularly distinct or memorable and none called for a particular screen talent or presence. Matt Damon, though, is an especially convincing everyman, even if he is just channeling the confusion from his Bourne blockbusters.

Still, I can understand a producer getting cold feet from Contagion. "You're going to kill off some of the main cast? Not  the disposable characters we construct to be killed off when we need to inject gravity into a sagging part of the story, but the main cast? And you're not dropping hints that they're going to die? And you're not going to bring them back? And you're going to front-load all of the tension of the movie? Steven. . ." Hence the expensive cast and hence some horribly cliché lines undoubtedly thrown in to fulfill audience expectations of a movie clearly sold as an "outbreak thriller."

Contagion's unconventional structure, though, is of far more interest than its stock "medical thriller" elements. The film begins innocently enough by emphasizing nothing in particular, which thereby draws attention to the ordinary: the touching, eating, drinking, coughing, sneezing, and fidgeting we do all everyday without note. Someone is sick, though, and all of our touching and playing leads to the outbreak of a flu-like virus. Matt Damon carries these early scenes of agitation and helplessness. Damon's Mitch Emhoff is plausible both in strength, for example when Mitch's wife collapses in front of the children in the kitchen, and in angry disbelief when doctors tell him his wife suddenly died, ". . .of something. We really don't know." This is, I think, how most of us might react to his predicament. We expect our ills to be cured or at least diagnosed. We rely on the closure of a scientific explanation.

Shortly thereafter the experts are brought in. They run around, get information, call other doctors, and so forth. Risking their lives they work and work as the outbreak continues. They work productively as newscasters speculate, random kooks come forward with pretend cures, and people start to seclude themselves. Then the doctors cure it. There is no setback, no conspiracy, no intrigue, no genius to be brought in from retirement, and no plant to be flown in from the Andes. There is no shtick and no pointless twenty minute diversion which results in them curing the disease anyway. They cure the disease and life begins to go back to normal. We retreat from the public chaos back into Mitch Emhoff's life in which the biggest concern is his daughter's prom date.

Does the pattern seem familiar? A minor event, a public outbreak, news reports, speculation, experts and cranks, and finally a cure and going back to your life? I would think so, though gladly we have witnessed nothing so severe. Contagion, then, more resembles a slice of our lives (one we probably never thought twice about) than any thriller I can think of. That such a plot seems in no way extraordinary is because of the tremendous success of modern medicine which manages to meet our unrealistic expectations, and this is ultimately the point of Contagion.

To be fair, Contagion drops a few plot lines but this feels appropriate. How many peripheral news stories, important as they are, fall by the wayside once the main crisis has subsided?

Dispensing with any extraneous plot lines and any postponement of the main line's resolution, Contagion is a tight thriller with a subtle and significant message. Moreover, to appreciate that message you need, at least a little, to reflect on your life and what you consider normal. Not too shabby for a genre which almost exclusively confines its ambitions to being "effective" (i.e. scary, thrilling, or tense) and seldom aspires to ask any larger questions.