Contagion review

 

Despite good performances and a solid concept, Contagion suffers from a muddled message and bloated cast list that the film can't properly withstand...

Since watching Contagion, I've discovered that the film is currently in release in IMAX cinemas as well as regular screens. This seems curious to me, because I can't for the life of me imagine what IMAX brings to the film. But then again, perhaps they needed screens that big to properly do justice to the sprawling ensemble, who didn't seem so well-served when I saw the film at the local multiplex.
The Oscar calibre cast includes Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet, with supporting performances by Bryan Cranston, John Hawkes and Elliott Gould. Technically, they're all supporting performances, seeing as how director Steven Soderbergh chooses to cover many perspectives on a global pandemic, rather than focus on one or two.

A deadly disease springs up with Beth Emhoff (Paltrow) as she returns from a business trip in Hong Kong, to her husband, Mitch (Damon). After she dies, it becomes apparent that she has passed the disease onto other people, and that it's highly contagious. Dr. Ellis Cheever (Fishburne) heads up the CDC team tasked with figuring it out and creating a vaccine.
Cheever dispatches doctors Erin Mears (Winslet) and Leonora Orantes (Cotillard) to work on the disease and figure out how to medicate it, although it appears to be figuring out mankind faster. Elsewhere, Mitch's natural immunity to the fatal virus apparently doesn't help the research
one bit, and as the death toll climbs into the millions, it threatens to bring an end to civilisation.
If there was a big problem with Soderbergh's Ocean's films after the first instalment, it was the lack of equal coverage for its ensemble. Ocean's Eleven has a perfunctory heist plot that finds work for every member of the starry crew, whereas Twelve and Thirteen actually take on new members while finding even less for the cast to do.

Soderbergh has largely remedied this problem with Contagion, but this also makes the running time feel quite distended, and neglects to find a satisfying conclusion for all of the myriad plot strands. If this were a movie in the same style as Monsters or Right At Your Door, telling one story at the same time as a cataclysmic event, he might have focused on Mitch's storyline alone.
And goodness knows, there's enough in there to have justified a full movie, as Mitch's scenes are by far the most interesting in the movie. The rest of it gives the wider context to prove that Mitch is actually proving to be Dad of the Year by being completely clinical and unemotional in looking after his teenage daughter, Jody, but I feel that Matt Damon's performance does enough to infer that.
Besides which, the story with Mitch is full of inspired and memorable moments that show how society is collapsing under its own expectations. At one point, it's implied that Mitch witnesses a family being murdered in their home across the street. He calls 911 but, in the time it takes to get through the call-centre spiel that has replaced the operator, two masked men escape down the street. This perfectly encapsulates a world gone to hell, all from one man's bedroom window.
However, Contagion shows the consequences of a pandemic as global, rather than personal. Sure, many of the different characters, operating around the world, act on their emotions and instincts at one point or another, but the sheer number of characters at work actually dilutes the collective impact of their actions.
Fishburne's Cheever is interesting as a counter-point to Mitch. His handling of the situation is most definitely emotional, but as compared to Mitch's powerlessness, he wields a great deal of authority. His decisions eventually come back to haunt him, restating and re-appropriating a point seen in several zombie movies: that it pays to be more rational than emotional in situations such as these.
Unfortunately, the film outright drops certain characters at various points, without fully resolving their situation. One of these characters, more disparate to the film than most, in present right up until the last ten minutes, but is still left hanging. The weirdest involves Elliot Gould's character, whose initial importance to the plot turns out to be purely functional.
However, Gould does deliver the opening shot at the Internet, by comparing the work of professional blogger Allen (Law) to “graffiti with punctuation.” Tirading against the Internet in any significant way might have made the filmmakers seem like old blokes, yelling at the Internet to get off of their lawns, and the peculiar relationship with new media unsettles the film.
Contagion partly serves as a study of how social conservatism only leads to greater panic in the long run, in which the role of the Internet could have played a valuable and interesting part. Instead, a smarmy bugger like Jude Law is cast as a dodgily-accented Australian profiteer, obsessed with the count of unique impressions on his blog, and continual references are made to the inaccuracy of Internet hearsay.
The former makes the latter seem redundant. It's almost like the film didn't want to appear to shout “Get off my lawn”, but neither does writer Scott Z. Burns make a secret of the anti-Internet stance. The effect is instead comparable to an old bloke glaring at you from his window, refusing to make a stand on whatever reason it is that you're annoying him.
All of which is quite reductive of what is supposed to be a gripping biological thriller, but Contagion is fairly well-made, despite the confusion of the script and the peculiarity of its general direction. The ensemble cast brings individually reliable performances, but it's Matt Damon's Mitch who represents the best combination of an interesting character, a compelling storyline, and an actor on top of his game.

In cinemas, it's bound to lure out more mischievous audience members. In the screening I attended, it became impossible to tell who was genuinely coming down with a cough or a cold, and who was simply being facetious for the sake of attention. And frankly, despite its sporadic moments of inspiration, I found the film itself so cluttered as to complicate the point, too.