A slick simulacrum of meaningful art, Contagion is a handsomely produced and directed trifle that successfully trades in fear-mongering but is ultimately as empty as its shots of deserted airports, malls and grocery stores.
Contagion cuts to the chase from its opening scene, which is labeled “Day 2.” Gwyneth Paltrow, returning home to Minneapolis from a business trip to Hong Kong, thinks she’s suffering from jet lag. Days later, she’s dead in a hospital emergency room, leaving behind a bereaved, confused husband (Matt Damon). With the number of victims multiplying exponentially around the world, the race is on for scientists and doctors from the Centers for Disease Control, World Health Organization and other agencies to find a cure for a virus they’ve never encountered before.
As scientists struggle to create a vaccine and find the source of the resourceful MEV-1 virus, an opportunistic freelance journalist and blogger (Jude Law) takes to the Internet and airwaves to accuse government officials of conspiring with pharmaceutical companies to withhold a cure for the sake of profit. An otherwise needless crooked front tooth clues us in that Law’s character isn’t the truth-telling activist he pretends to be.
Set to a chilly electronic score, Contagion is really just one long montage of grim scientists, the dead and the dying, looters, rolling military trucks and various sorts of generally panicked behavior. Director Steven Soderbergh skillfully combines shots to create a ballet of paranoia, confusion and suffering. But it’s all rather numbing as we never stay with any one character long enough to truly care about what happens to him. Lost lives, unethical actions and criminal behavior quickly dissipate in the wake of another wave of death or hysteria or suffocating solemnity.
Instead of building human drama, Soderbergh is content to make Contagion an exercise in style, just as he did with all three of his grating, smug Ocean’s films. To this end, he relies on his familiar trademarks – scenes playing to time-shifted dialogue; hand-held camera work; lingering shots where the frame contents are generally still.
To be fair, there’s a stomach-tightening effectiveness to early scenes of the virus spreading through a series of coughs, handshakes and various shared items. It’s more than likely that hand sanitizers will enjoy a boost in sales after this film’s release. From a technical and logistical standpoint, Contagion impresses with its scenes of auditoriums turned into triage centers. A muted palette also helps underscore the generally somber mood.
When “Day 1” is revealed at the film’s underwhelming conclusion, it explains the chain of events that set off the global pandemic with a man-is-his-own-worst-enemy message that feels disingenuous. Soderbergh doesn’t have the vision to turn this movie into a chillingly incisive, Kubrickian assessment of humankind. He also doesn’t have the gonzo instincts of Oliver Stone to run with the elements ripe for conspiracy exploitation. For all its trappings of serious drama — including a skilled cast, restrained delivery and interesting subject matter — Contagion is a pretentious, uninvolving variation on the disaster flick.
This article appears in Sep 8-14, 2011.