Contagion

Early in Steven Soderbergh’s star-studded, defiantly unglamorous Contagion, a doctor tells Matt Damon of his wife, Gwyneth Paltrow’s death.  Fortunately I have never experienced such a thing, but the strictly informational tone of his delivery struck me as authentic, and serves a good analogy to the approach of the filmmakers in crafting a quasi-art-house Outbreak.  The “storyline,” follows a deadly new disease, from cause to cure, through epidemic status, with a similar bedside manner, and for the first hour at least, uses this strategy effectively to build tension with each chilling scene.  Ultimately though, Contagion’s vision proves inconsistent, and its preoccupation with resolution becomes an infection that undermines its credibility, as the final act trades on its surgical precision with forced character arcs and unearned maudlin displays designed to tug at the heartstrings.

It is a shame, really, because the first half of Contagion is so smart, and so engaging.  Undeniably watchable, it’s hard not to imagine indie-giant Soderbergh relishing an opportunity to throw the pretty faces of Hollywood against a wall of inevitability; Gwyneth Paltrow’s autopsy, where her vacant, colorless, death-stare accompanies off-screen sounds of a saw cutting into her skull is the film’s iconic shot, a meta-moment where the director of Traffic and Oceans Twelve gets to be one and the same.  Never a stranger to multiple plotlines, Soderbergh doesn’t so much weave together stories, as he does situations.  He parallels scenes of Damon trying to protect his potentially-immune daughter, the CDC’s search for an antidote, the global government response, a doctor’s quest for patient zero, and escalating fears and repercussions at the community level, each populated by the Hollywood gene pool, and edited together as they would unfold in time, rather than by narrative cliffhangers, an all-to-common docudrama approach.  For my money, Kate Winslet’s epidemic intelligence officer dominates this part of the film, and not necessarily because of her acting ability, everyone in this film is first-rate.  The success of Contagion lies in its seemingly effortless transparency, without any overtly “acted” roles, the audience is able to take sides with whatever behind-the-scenes element they find the most interesting.  Soderbergh deftly manages to ask the question, would you rather watch what happens to a community through an epidemic or how the CDC responds to it, instead of would you rather watch Matt Damon save his daughter or Kate Winslet track down patient zero.  Soderbergh maintains that ethos throughout the film, but once Winslet’s situation is concluded, he simply cannot disguise the pull, and forced trajectory of Scott Z. Burns’s script towards a more character-centered, emotional resolution.

A good film could certainly have been told where Matt Damon re-creates a prom night for his quarantined daughter, or where the plight of the entire human race is boiled down to one small Hong Kong village, or where a government agent accused of nepotism gives away his personal antidote; it’s just this is not the same film with which we started.  Perhaps screenwriter Burns did not trust his audience.  More likely, Contagion was written for any potential outlet; but once Soderbergh became attached the Lifetime Network plot twists should have been jettisoned.  First on the list, Jude Law’s ridiculously overwritten conspiracy-theorist internet blogger, who capitalizes on the epidemic to level accusations of government and CDC collusion, where in his mind, money and nepotism rules the day, even in the face of the annihilation of ten percent of the world’s population.  I get what Burns is going after.  The problem is that it rings completely false through its manipulation of an obvious trigger-point.  The suggestion that Sanjay Gupta would lend credence to this braggart by having him a guest on his CNN show after the deaths of 12 million people is an insult to the audience.  He is completely overdrawn.  Of course people like that exist in the world, but how many conspiracy theorists garnered national attention after 9/11?  Even giving the film the benefit of the doubt with respect to compressed time, which I’m not inclined to do since every few minutes Soderbergh reminds us just how much time has passed, that sort of dissent is just button-pushing, and creates an agenda that conflicts with the film’s tone.

Contagion is an occasionally fascinating examination of a global crisis, an elevated disease-of-the-week docudrama by an A-list director that unfortunately turns into parable.  Ironically, a lesser director could have probably made a better film by surrendering to the melodrama.  Let’s face it, Outbreak IS that better film.  But in this case I’d rather prefer the parts to the whole, especially when seeing something in a different way, and for much of the time, Contagion is firmly in the hot zone.   ***1/2 out of *****