Contagion

CONTAGION is a film of coldness and style, indifference and beauty. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, and written by his collaborator on THE INFORMANT! (Scott Z. Burns), a specific cool is carried out within the frames of CONTAGION. Beginning with shots of people touching faces, glasses, each other, doorknobs, the germaphobic early montage is set off with a very sick number of people from across the globe who are seemingly, by their disease, interconnected. The most focused of these people is Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is leaving Hong Kong after a business trip with a fever, blurry vision, and terrible headaches. She returns home to her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) and her seven-year-old. Quickly and inevitably, Beth falls to the ground, seizes, and dies. The doctors are baffled, citing west nile or a number of other overseas contracted diseases to her death. The circumstances are odd though, and Mitch distraughtly returns home only to find more horror.
Uncovering a cell phone video online of a similar death on the same day, Alan Krumweide (Jude Law), a conspiracy theorist blogger, has early musings of a corrupt CDC, and his early crackpot-ery slowly develops into prophetic eeriness.
Doctors Ellen Mears (Kate Winslet), Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle), and Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) slowly work through mass infection and death to uncover the secrets to the disease. These cool-headed figures of solidarity often act in practical manners, just as in the ways that the looting in the streets as the epidemic escalates seems sensical rather than barbaric.
Similarly, Mitch keeps his uninfected daughter an essential prisoner by his side, keeping her away from her loving, worrying boyfriend to protect her, Marion Cotillard's Leonora, who is investigating the source of the disease in Hong Kong, keeps loyal to small groups of hopeless villagers, and John Hawkes' janitor named Roger pleads for the help of the CDC doctors whose wastebaskets he empties.
People die quickly in CONTAGION, and many found it bothersome how briskly the plot moved on, and how coldly their deaths were consider matter-of-fact. But this is the strength of CONTAGION: accentuating the indifference of a disease to the petty problems of people. There is heart within CONTAGION, buried under facts, figures, and supports for the plot. Consider Laurence Fishburne's conflicted CDC doctor. Stylistically as well, CONTAGION is well crafted and beautiful to look at, featuring very 21st century images of stark contrasts of pale tan and civilization's mechanical attire. This is a great film, tense, scary, and haunting. Although the subject matter is currently overshadowing the content, this is a film very much worth seeing.
Contagion: ★★★★