Contagion

Contagion (2011)

Runtime: 106 minutes

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: A great cast

From: Warner Bros.

I recently proclaimed that more Steven Soderbergh should be viewed by me; I was out for part of Wednesday w/ family but this was viewed Tuesday night, a little more than 24 hours before it left Prime’s free tier—people likely would call me a fool for missing out.

Understandably, this film about a pandemic that started from a virus originated from China, the fears of it being a biological weapon, the disease spreading worldwide and creating a vaccine to combat it—the movie has become more popular in the past five years. I didn’t view it in 2020 as that’s when Mom became ill then passed away—no, not due to any virus but I was happy to view the movie now rather than during a bad time in my life.

The film has an all-star cast and several different plot threads as this MEV-1 virus (it’s different from COVID-19, although its origins…) is tracked from it landing in America to its spread and attempted cure. Scientists (from the CDC and the World Health Organization) aren’t the only ones followed. Jude Law is the paranoid conspiracy theorist who at least to some is an audience surrogate-Lord, it was a sad realization that this character predicted the rise of the antivax/science-denying A-hole that is far too common IRL-and then there’s the whole ordeal that Matt Damon’s character went through.

Some of the predictions about what would happen in a pandemic didn’t exactly come true, but an uncomfortable amount of the predictions were. This includes the rampant baseless speculation, the idea of alternative treatments, and yeah, the disease bringing out the worst in humanity. I could write paragraphs about how it changed America and Americans for the worse but I’d probably be opening a cam of worms I don’t want opened so best move on…

What a cast this has: Law, Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jennifer Ehle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Elliott Gould, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Bryan Cranston, Chin Han, etc. Not all have large parts and you shouldn’t expect all to survive by the end; the movie has some deliberate unglamorous moments & Contagion is better for it. The propulsive score from Cliff Martinez was excellent and while not always conventional, matched the visuals. So did the editing.

As stated earlier in the year, I’ve been missing out on Steven Soderbergh--Contagion was an enthralling medical thriller.