Contagion (2011)

First impressions? I have no idea what to make of it. Then as I began to bounce ideas of the Whalley, I found that I did not like this film at all. Be warned, there are spoilers.

Well, let’s start off with the plot. From what the trailer told me, it was essentially a ‘what if’ scenario, seeing what would happen if bird flu went to full blown human-to-human transmission. This was because the main line from the trailer was “No-one needs to weaponise bird flu, the birds are doing it,”. The problem with this is it’s not bird flu! It’s revealed that a bulldozer knocked down a banana tree, which a bat then ate, but it dropped a bit into a pig pen, which a pig ate, the pig was then sold onto a chef who chopped it up, didn’t wash his hands and gave the disease to Beth Enhoff, played by Gwneyth Paltrow. So the disease is the bulldozer-bat-banana-pig-chef virus. And yes, despite having about fifteen minutes of screen time, Paltrow is one of the top billed cast members.

And that’s it. It follows the same line of ‘Lost in Translation’ where it’s just people living out their lives, in ‘Contagion’s case, with an epidemic thrown in. But there isn’t really a plot, and if there was one it kept being broken up by the constant scene changes to the different stories being told. Like I said in my review for ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, it breaks up the flow of the film. This also means that there’s hardly any character development so I don’t give a damn about any of the characters. And any characters we do care about, like Kate Winslet’s ‘Dr Erin Mears’, die twenty minutes after being introduced. Apart from that, characters are dropped and introduced every five seconds so we have no conclusion to their story, or have any idea who died or not. ‘Dr. Leonora Ornates’, played by ‘Inception’ bigwig Marion Cotillard, could have been dropped from the film as she didn’t contribute much, and I even forgot her character existed.

Back to the multi-plot point. I’ll list them, it’s easier.

·         First plot follows Mitch and Jory Emhoff, played by Matt Damon and Anna Jacoby-Heron respectively, trying to survive in the world that is gradually breaking down.

·         Second plot has Dr. Ellis Cheever, played by Laurence Fishburne, trying his best to run the CDC during the crisis, as well as look out for his loved ones.

·         Third plot has conspiracy nut Alan Krumweide, played by Jude Law, essentially making things more chaotic by saying the CDC shouldn’t be trusted.

·         Fourth plot follows Dr Erin Mears, still played by Kate Winslet, performing her duties out in the field.

·         Fifth plot follows Professor Sussman and Dr. Ally Hextall, played by Elliot Gould and Jennifer Ehle, trying to work on a vaccine.

·         And finally the sixth plot follows Dr. Leonora Ornates, still played by Marion Cotillard, trying to track down the origin of the disease.

And there’s the major problem with this film, there’s too many plots to follow. As mentioned earlier it keeps cutting between scenes and plots, so we can’t keep track of the stories. And in a film which lasts an hour and forty minutes, there’s not enough time to follow all the stories. The film does focus more on the Emhoff, the CDC and Krumweide stories, which were done very well, though the Krumweide story does coincide with the CDC plot, and the CDC plot also crosses into the Mears and vaccine stories.

As mentioned Winslet’s character is a likeable character, but she does get infected early into the film which leads to her death, which was a very sad moment. But her story did seem to have been cut too soon, and one of her scenes was of her explaining something to a committee, which, whilst it does explain the facts to the audience, is also pointless because the committee SHOULD KNOW THIS! Then there’s one member of the committee who acts like a complete bitch, more concerned about money than lives.

Leonora’s story was also too short, one scene which could have had important dialogue was covered up by techno music, and the person she was talking to kept disregarding her comments. Heck, I saw this with the Whalley, who knows some Chinese, and he said one scene where they were arguing about Leonora’s comments, Whalley said they were actually talking about who had lunch! Then she’s kidnapped and disappears for half the film, so that her kidnappers can get the vaccine for their village, which hasn’t and will never be infected. Of course, after the trade was made she learns that the vaccine the village received was actually a placebo (since she wasn’t the only kidnap made), so Leonora then rushes back to tell the villagers, especially the children. And there’s no conclusion. We don’t see her get back to the village, or at all after that scene, which is pretty understandable since she was blindfolded when she was taken there, therefore she has no idea where the village is!

Mitch’s story was really compelling though, as he represents the everyday common person. All he wants to do is protect his daughter and we can really feel a connection with him. The only faults I found was that, at the beginning anyway, he’s stupid! The doctor says his wife has passed on, yet Mitch asks if he can talk to her. There was the point that he knew that his wife was killed by a virus and was put in isolation, BUT, not only did the hospital let him go without reason, but when he starts coughing he tells Winslet’s character that he “might have caught a bug,”. I literally started hitting my head on the seat in front of me at the sheer stupidity of, not only Mitch’s character, but all of the characters. And I thought I was going to hate his daughter when he forbids her from contact with any other people, especially her boyfriend, but she actually understood the reason why he’s doing what he’s doing. It was a pleasant surprise. It was also a very thoughtful scene when Mitch gave his daughter and her boyfriend the prom night they never had, which also coincided with Mitch emotionally finding his wife’s camera.

Whilst Hextall is in the film in its entirety, Sussman just disappears, so there’s no conclusion for that character. Hextall does enable us to meet her father, played by Dan Flannery, though, who, in twenty seconds of character development I kid you not, becomes my favourite character. Seriously, in twenty seconds we’re told that he risked his health to help others and he would rather his daughter leaves than make her ill. Now when the rest of your cast are being outshone by a character who, not only is in the film for a minute, but doesn’t even have a name, you know something definitely went wrong somewhere!

And then we have Jude Law’s character; Alan Krumweide, who basically represents any protestor who doesn’t know what the Hell they’re on about. You know, any protester which says the current system is crap but doesn’t give an alternate strategy, or one which will obviously not work in reality. Which we get a lot nowadays. Anyway, Krunweide writes a load of blogs (which Sussman says is graffiti with punctuation.....I feel sad now), which basically slates anyone who tries to combat the virus. And by God I hated this character, I really did. He continuously says the government is organising a conspiracy, that they’re making money off peoples suffering, creates panic, paranoia and anarchy, and he’s a Goddamn hypocrite! Yeah! He says he got the virus and cured himself with a random drug, which causes looting at pharmacies, and his friend, his pregnant friend, begs him for help, even offers him money, and he refuses. She then dies, and he doesn’t give a damn. And through all this, not only did he not even have the disease, he earned $4.5million! Somehow! I truly hated this guy! I actually hoped he would get the disease towards the end of the film, as an attempt to get the audience to like him. But no. We last see him interviewing people who are queuing up for the vaccine. He does not get any repercussions, though government officials say they’ll be charging him with numerous convictions, including manslaughter, as well as being sued by many people. I still feel that his story didn’t have a conclusion though.

But despite the breaking of the flow, despite the constant scene changes, the plot is still very effective, simply because it could happen. In fact, it has happened. As the film points out, the last major epidemic was the Spanish Flu which wiped out over one billion people died, then, of course there was the dangers of bird and swine flu in recent years. It shows how society can break apart as a flu becomes more and more dangerous. And it even steals the message I said ‘Survival of the Dead’ showed, which was in times of crisis, the enemy is ourselves, as people start senselessly killing each other, assaulting each other, riot and loot.

And the makers actually did their research on how a vaccine can be created and how flu can spread, as the disease research personnel reference actual  basic reproduction number, finding the origins of the virus and figuring out how to grow the virus. It’s really interesting and, for once, actually educational. The only downside is that it’s normally shown through one person explaining it to another, even though the second person should already know this!

And whether you like the characters or not, a majority of the acting is great. Matt Damon and Jude Law were fantastic in their roles, whilst Kate Winslet and Laurence Fishburne were also pretty good. Gwyneth Paltrow also gave a pretty grotesque (in a good way) performance of a person having severe seizures, it almost makes you look away because it looks so realistic. Marion Cotillard though, at times, looked bored stiff. It also makes you think how much some of these big named actors and actresses were paid when they were only in the film for fifteen minutes.

The weird thing is though, the virus isn’t really shown to be much of a threat. Sure, we’re told there are thousands infected every day and in the end millions died, but from what I was told from a radio review and the trailer, I thought people were going to be dropping left, right and centre. If I remember right I think only about five people die on screen, then we just see a lot of body bags and memorials in other scenes. Yes, the film focuses more on the creation of a vaccine and the deterioration of society, but it would’ve been more effective if we saw the virus claiming lives every single day at an alarming rate, it would’ve made the film more tense and terrifying.

I think it’s one of those marmite films; you either love it or hate it. I found it to be a bad film, but still a very effective and a very powerful piece of cinema.