FILM REVIEW Contagion

When panic goes viral


Ciara Moynihan

Contagion. It’s a word we’ve recently come to associate with the knock-on effect of national economic crises. However, if you’re looking for a nail-biting tale of financial meltdown, stay at home, watch Prime Time, and save yourself a few bob. Steven Soderbergh’s star-studded film ‘Contagion’ applies the word in its medical sense, tracking the rapid progression of a lethal airborne virus that kills its victims in a matter of days.
The action starts pretty much immediately. American marketing manager Beth Emhoff  (Gwynetha Paltrow) returns home to Minneapolis from a business trip to Hong Kong, having stopped off in Chicago on the way back. The next day she feels unwell – she has a cough and a headache, and she is feverish. She collapses, fits and dies. Her young son soon shows the same symptoms and also succumbs. Her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) proves to be immune, but others – a lot of others – are not so lucky. A waiter in Hong Kong dies. The virus claims more victims in Chicago. A pandemic soon threatens to sweep the globe.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US Homeland Security and the World Health Organisation mobilise – the spread must be contained, the source must be identified, and a vaccine must be found. The action hops from country to country, from China to Switzerland to the U.S., and from laboratory to boardroom.
A sceptical WHO representative resists the idea of informing the public about the fatal virus – “We tried that with swine flu, and all we did was panic healthy people,” she says. When it is pointed out that the disease is spread via the respiratory system and contact with ‘fomites’ (any inanimate object – clothing, drinking glasses, door handles – that can carry disease-causing organisms), she scoffs that “everyone with hands, a nose and a mouth” is susceptible so. Quite, a raised eyebrow informs us.
Digital wall charts visually display the pandemic’s ever-increasing global footprint, subtitles reinforce the shocking speed at which it takes hold. On Day 6, five people have died, and there are 32 cases. By Day 13, eight million are infected. Panic spreads, curfews and quarantines are brutally enforced, food becomes scarce, shops are looted and civil society breaks down. All of this is cut through with images of ordinary people coughing, sweating, foaming at the mouth and dying. Compelling stuff.
The pandemic’s progression is morbidly gripping, and the cinematography is suitably bleak. But something does not sit right. I just didn’t care about the film’s characters. I was supposed to be upset to learn that heroic medical-intelligence specialist Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) was infected, but I wasn’t. I didn’t care whether the conspiracy theories expounded by the bizarrely crooked-toothed blogger Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) were correct; I wasn’t impressed by the selfless actions of a high-ranking CDC official (Laurence Fishburne); I wasn’t touched by Matt Damon’s efforts to protect his remaining daughter. 
Ultimately, ‘Contagion’ tries to be too much: A dispassionate examination of the scientific community’s ability to respond to a pandemic, a poignant tale of heroism and human resilience, and a ‘whodunit’ thriller with a twist.
The film is meticulously researched and has been praised for its scientific accuracy, and it does successfully portray in frightening detail just how ill-equipped the world is to deal with virus mutation. The efforts to convey the human side of the story are lacklustre, however. And while the final ‘ah-ha’ moment is appropriately random, its skin-tingling power is sapped by an utterly unnecessary, strained effort to connect Beth Emhoff’s employer to her demise. A groan-inducing compulsion for plot neatness as pointless and distracting as Jude Law’s false teeth. Pity.

Rating 5 out of 10