Contagion
Directed By:
Steven Soderbergh
Written By: Scott
Z. Burns
Starring: Matt
Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Marion
Cotillard, John Hawkes, Jennifer Ehle, Demitri Martin, Bryan Cranston, and
Elliot Gould.
Director of Photography: Peter Andrews, Editor: Stephen
Mirrione, Production Designer: Howard Cummings, Original Score: Cliff Martinez
Rated: PG-13 for seeing
famous people horrifically die.
There’s
a number of minor plot strands throughout Contagion,
a big budget star-packed virus thriller from master filmmaker Steven
Soderbergh, but the one that opens the film is the most curious. We begin with
Gwyneth Paltrow, looking a bit under the weather as she sits in an airport bar.
She answers the phone and talks to a lover that is not her husband after
they’ve quickly met during a layover. The talk has no discussion of “what if
your husband finds out?” or any of that, and while her husband will learn, Ms. Paltrow will be dead, and nothing will come of it. But it's the discussion that Mr. Soderbergh wants us to listen to—it’s rational, good fun, the tone
suggests. Nothing serious, maybe a little emotional, but mostly rational. Too rational almost.
Contagion may be a genre picture, but
the aims of Mr. Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns are both the political
and the philosophical. This is a film about the battle between rationality and
emotions, between doing what’s necessary and doing what’s right. The virus outbreak genre pretty much began and ended with 1995’s Outbreak and there’s not much to say in terms of the dangers
organisms can cause in humans—after all, it’s not exactly very cinematic to
watch people cough and die. But paranoia, as one character says “more dangerous
than any virus,” is a ripe subject, especially as we near the anniversary of
September 11th, as the age of conspiracies and technology has completely changed our way of processing information. Mr. Soderbergh and Mr. Burns create a fascinating
and horrifying portrayal of how our emotions can destroy our bodies.
