By: Dove
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I’m a germaphobe. I suppose there’s a more clinical way to say it, but I know I’m not alone in my paranoia over random cooties. At one point in my life, I was washing my hands 20-30 times a day on average (which is now pretty much in the OCD category, but back then it was just weird), and have managed to whittle that down to around 10 times a day. Usually this applies when I touch doorknobs, keys, people, or anything outside of my own home… and of course when I’m cooking, which is only the right thing to do, and any time you’re supposed to wash your hands.
I thought I was good, until I saw Warner Bros. new movie Contagion. I was supposed to type this review earlier today, but accidently cut open my finger on a plastic take-out container. Now all I can think about is what type of life-threatening disease will be transferred from my over-used keyboard into the partially-healed wound on my finger. Obviously anything that Bactine can’t take care of is of concern to me now. [Note to self: buy some bandaids, idiot.] Trust, once you see Contagion, you’ll be thinking about it too.
If you’re reading this, then chances are you already saw previews or read some reviews at least, so you know that Contagion is all about a global pandemic that hits the population suddenly and quickly. Of course, it has to start somewhere, and our first glimpse of the cough heard round the world is from the sketchy mouth of Gwyneth Paltrow‘s character Beth. Beth is married to Mitch (Matt Damon), and once the disease takes hold, it’s not long before Mitch realizes that this is much bigger than a flu bug.
Enter the government and agencies working to figure out the virus and how to cure it. But first on the list of tragic to-do’s is how to contain the public without creating a panic. Good luck. Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet and Bryan Cranston lead the U.S. measures, while Marion Cotillard travels abroad on behalf of the World Health Organization.
Somewhere in between their scurrying around for answers, there is a growing list of victims, from a few dozen to a few million in a matter of days. And then we have Jude Law‘s egocentric blogger Alan, who is so focused on his “unique views” that he’ll go to almost any length to break stories from every angle. He contributes some ugly truth to the punchbowl of politics, balancing out his horribly dishonest moments. Not to mention, the blogger vs. journalist jokes in the movie are on point for our current state of media.
Contagion is not as much volatile and scary as it is quiet and stressful. There are so many moments of morality throughout the film, that even as you are nervous about who will get sick next, or who will get hurt trying to save their family, you’ll find reasons to have hope for mankind. You’ll also learn that teenage girls will be teenagers even with the end of the world looming…
I’ve read/heard some reviews complaining about the over-abundance of characters in the film, however, I think the real star here is the virus, with the co-star being fear. The characters are merely pawns in the game. Matt Damon‘s Mitch handles his fate the way I hope I could if I were in his shoes, while Laurence Fishburne‘s Dr. Cheever does what many of us would probably do given the circumstances. And then even he surprises us.
Remember I told you, it’s all about the quiet. The score is perfectly poised by Cliff Martinez, who is also responsible for scoring films like Traffic, Stiletto and The Lincoln Lawyer. He understands suspense in the music, and provides the perfect accompaniment for fear to run its course in Contagion.
The odd/cool thing for me in the stillness of Contagion is that there are no birds, no overactive traffic sounds, no screaming neighbors… it’s like the characters are walking about in bubbles. You don’t feel fear outside of their immediate surroundings – the chaos is there, but not in your face. In that sense, I get the vibe that director/producer Steven Soderbergh took some notes from classic episodes of The Twilight Zone. At least I’d like to think that, because I can’t remember anything more haunting than some of those old episodes. Loneliness and alone-ness at its best.
I highly recommend Contagion to anyone who likes a good suspense movie, accented with great actors and something that will make you think about how many things you touch, how many hands you shake, how many people cough or sneeze next to you on the train… the list goes on.
Now I need to go wash my hands again and re-apply Bactine…
