Contagion
Rated PG-13. Our Ratings: V-4 ;L -1 ; S/N –1.
Running time: 1 hour 45 min.
 |
Mat Damon this time plays an ordinary Chicago father trying to
protect his children from a plague. © 2011 Warner Brothers |
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
not been restored?
...
“Death has come up into our windows,
it has entered our palaces,
to cut off the children from the streets
and the young men from the squares.”
Speak! Thus says the Lord:
“Human corpses shall fall
like dung upon the open field,
like sheaves behind the reaper,
and no one shall gather them.”
Jeremiah 8:22 & 9:21-22
Steven Soderberg (Erin Brocovich, Oceans 11) and screenwriter: Scott
Z. Burns’ thriller boasts an ensemble cast and a globe-circling plot.
The villain this time is not human, but a deadly virus that threatens to
destroy humanity, or at least a major portion of it. Business woman Beth
Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow), has just returned from Hong Kong to Minneapolis
when she comes down with what at first seems like a minor illness. However,
within two days she collapses, her body twitching, and her mouth fomaing.
When the doctor reports her death, the husband Mitch (Matt Damon) cannot
believe it. He is crushed even further when their little son also dies.
In Minneapolis, Chicago, London, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong people develop
mysterious symptoms: coughs that wrack the body. Fever, soon followed by
seizures, and brain hemorrhage quickly lead to death. At the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, Deputy Director Cheever (Laurence Fishburne)
directs researchers discover what it is causing the growing pandemic. From
Geneva the World Health Organization sends Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard)
to Asia to uncover the source. Her scanning surveillance tapes of a casion
and restaurant visited by Beth Emhoff gives the film the aura of a crime
who-dunit.
In Chicago, as the disease spreads, people start to panic, much of this induced
by rumors spread on the Internet by Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law), an unscrupilous
blogger who has gained a following by raising government conspiracy theories.
Mitch, quarantined in a hospital, is anxious to get out so he can protect
his college-aged daughter who has returned home. She feels guilty because
she was not there when her mother and brother died. Even though plays Mitch,
there are no false heroics, he representing the ordinary citizen victimized
by the world-spanning contagion. He stands out because he was fortunate enough
to be immune to the disease.
Although the large cast and episodic structure does not allow us to focus
much on any one character, the film is exciting to watch—and chilling
to see how jet travel contributes to the spread of disease and the Internet
to the spread of almost equally deadly false rumors. In the time of Jeremiah
the prophet such a plague was regarded as a sign of God’s wrathful
judgment, but what about today? Some would still regard this as being the
case, but the film suggests that there are a lot of complicating factors
that the ancients never dreamt of. What do you think?
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