Steven Soderbergh’s much-anticipated medical thriller about a viral outbreak had an appealing bleak realism, and sported some eerily believable scenes in a richly paced thrill ride. On the whole, Contagion delivered some disturbing moments and generally satisfied.
Hitting theaters on September 9th, Contagion builds some great suspense and uses its phenomenal ensemble cast to great effect. The one major disappointment of the film came at the final act, when the movie suddenly started playing it safe.
It felt like Soderbergh pulled his punches, delivering a “tidy” ending that didn’t satisfy as much as it could have. Instead of delivering a near-perfect movie that wasn’t afraid to go to that dark and inevitable place it was leading up to, it grew suddenly sentimental and introspective at the end.
The story opens on Day 2 (of the assumed spread of the contagion). Gwyneth Paltrow plays Beth, a very ill-looking woman on her way back from a Hong Kong business trip. When she gets home she continues to deteriorates, and within a week there have been cases of this new virus and associated deaths all across the world.
The film’s pace is as fast and unrelenting as the spread of the contagion, a new virus that transmits through the air and through touch. Beth’s husband, played by Matt Damon, fights to protect his family as the death toll rises and society begins to unravel around the edges.
The heroes are the CDC and WHO officials who are tracking down the origin of the virus, and trying to create an antivirus. Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Jennifer Ehle all play various officials and scientists that dive unflinchingly into the fray to battle the extremely virulent contagion.
While Soderbergh builds a great stomping pace, he is sometimes heavy-handed with the science-based data dumps. The story unfolds relentlessly, and relies on realism and accuracy to ensure that the characters and events are authentic in their reactions. The problem is, if Soderbergh and scriptwriter Scott Burns had followed the events to their inevitable conclusion as unflinchingly as they began it, the ending would have been a very different affair. The tension eases prematurely as a pretty sentimental ending shapes up with all the loose ends neatly tied.
I wanted to see the inevitable, the ultimate conclusion to a story about a new virus that is more virulent than anything ever seen before. The few scenes of looting and even the growing chaos felt muted toward the end. The logical continuation of the situation would have been the breakdown and collapse of society. That’s what I felt the film needed, and instead Soderbergh and co. decided to pull their punches and play it safe.
The dynamic cast came together and delivered some noteworthy performances. Damon and Paltrow sported played-down looks in their respective roles, and relied on raw emotion and some nuanced portrayals. Winslet played a hard-nosed CDC official with her usual skill.
Cotillard and Ehle impressed in their respective roles as strong, intelligent women. Both gave the otherwise bloodless characters of a World Health Organization agent and a scientist fighting for a cure some heart. Though both parts were drawn as frighteningly austere professional women, both Cotillard and Ehle were able to soften their characters without lessening their intelligence or purpose.
Jude Law played a fringe blogger with competency, though I don’t feel the obnoxious journalist was much of a stretch for him. Fishburne looked bloated and aged, but his performance certainly didn’t lack stamina.
The music, some of the same strange techno bopping tunes we heard accompanying the trailers for Contagion, was off-putting. It didn’t seem to fit the mood of the film at all, and I think the decision to play jarring techno-phage music in the soundtrack really bizarre and detracting.
Besides the feeling of being somewhat cheated by the end, I think Soderbergh did a good job creating an atmosphere of relentless inevitability and some strong, long-lasting tension. The characters and general realism in the film worked well for the type of story, and made incredible events seem not only likely, but inevitable. This is a movie that will probably impress and Contagion is a good reason to get out to the theater this weekend.
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