****WARNING: MILD SPOILERS AHEAD****
There are some people who would uncharitably suggest that the biggest plus point of Contagion is getting to see Gwyneth Paltrow die a slow and painful death. Not me, obviously. That would be cruel. Well, unless you really hate Shakespeare In Love and/or Coldplay. However, it is an indication of just how packed with stars Steven Soderbergh’s thriller actually is. Like the great disaster movies of the past, Contagion fills the screen with the Hollywood elite (who, in this film, include Jude Law, Matt Damon, Lawrence Fishburne and Kate Winslet), and the audience will be kept guessing as to just who is going to snuff it. But unlike the majority of modern disaster movies, this (mainly) eschews campy theatrics of such films as the ITV+1 favourite Outbreak and goes for a more sobering examination of the breakdown of social order when faced with a pandemic.
After returning from a trip to Hong Kong, Beth Emhoff (Paltrow) begins suffering from what she thinks is flu. However, when she ends up dead, it becomes apparent that she needed more than Lemsip and a lie down. Soon it’s discovered that a deadly virus is taking hold of the world’s population and as government scientists – amongst them Dr. Ellis Cheever (Fishburne) and Dr. Erin Mears (Winslet) – attempt to find a vaccine, social order begins to break down. As Emhoff’s husband (Damon) tries to process the death of his wife – and the discovery that he is immune – he witnesses their neighbourhood descend into chaos as he tries to prevent his daughter from contracting the disease. With an investigative journalist (Law) pushing a homeopathic cure, another doctor (Marion Cottillard) trying to find the infection’s origin and a world in panic, no-one will escape the effects of the contagion.
As he often does, Soderbergh has created an intriguing blend of Hollywood blockbuster dramatics and the intimate aesthetics of the American Indie film. With a palette of washed out colours and sparse locations, the film places itself definitively in the ‘here and now’ and it’s this sense of reality that grounds the film despite the presence of so much star power. Soderbergh is also clearly working with a healthy budget, but he reigns back on big set pieces and – with the odd exception – concentrates on the personal. The cast imbue the dialogue heavy script with a sense of gravitas that never comes across as hokey (although whilst the science behind looks to be impeccably researched, with references to SARS and the Bird Flu virus abound, it sometimes drifts into large amounts of exposition). The multi layered nature of the narrative is sometimes slightly disjointed – as we bounce from the Doctors doing research to Mitch agonising about his daughter, then to a doctor researching AND agonising about his wife and so on – but it also creates a tangible sense of urgency that adds to the atmosphere.
Indeed, whilst it shies away from the contemporary disaster genre, Soderbergh’s film seems to have taken many of its cues from some of the political thrillers and dark sci-fi dramas of 70s US cinema with a vein of pessimism that recalls the likes of Soylent Green, alongside a concentration on ‘procedure’ so beloved of such films as All The Presidents Men. Unsurprisingly for a director who can count such films as Ocean’s 11, Schizopolis, Sex, lies and videotape and Out Of Sight amongst his varied output, it’s this mix of genres that makes Contagion an effective, intelligent and sometimes chilling piece of work.
The extras are featurettes (sadly no commentary from the usually entertaining Soderbergh) – Contagion: How a Virus Changes the World, The Reality of Contagion (Bluray only) and The Contagion Detectives (Bluray only) which are fine for what they are (basically Discovery Channel type documentaries) but it’s a shame there isn’t more.
Contagion on DVD and Blu-ray is available now from Warner Brothers