Steven Soderbergh is one of the best filmmakers around, even if not all of his movies are life-changing.  He understands the crafts of storytelling and filmmaking like few others do, and he also pushes the envelope in other parts of the industry, from technological areas to distribution.  I was FINALLY able to see his latest film, Contagion, about the outbreak of a deadly virus on Earth, and the resulting societal fallout while the CDC races to create a vaccine.

It all starts when Beth Emhoff (Gwenyth Paltrow) returns home to the states, ill, after a trip to Hong Kong.  She quickly goes from ill to stupid-ill and beyond, signalling authorities that there is a big problem coming down the pipe --- one that has the potential to kill at least a billion people within the next few months.

I should point out at this time, that my wife and my staff call me a ‘germophobe.’  Now, I’m not one of those weirdos you see on the street wearing a painters mask or anything (I love to fake sneeze near them when they walk by, it freaks them right out).  However, anytime I leave my office, I will sanitize (and yes, I also know that this isn’t a great idea as it can make the germs stronger).  I also wash my hands quite frequently, and I’m wary about touching my face if I’ve been pushing a dirty cart around at Superstore.  My wife also has her PhD in Community Health and Epidemiology, so the study and tracking of disease is a conversation that can sometimes come up in our house.  Needless to say, take my paranoia and add the fact that I love a good apocalypse movie, and you can see that Contagion is right up my alley.

I thought Contagion was first-rate filmmaking, and I’ll tell you why, but first, I am a bit hesitant to recommend it blindly without telling you that this isn’t an action movie.  No one dives into a helicopter to get to a hot zone in time to save the infected.  In fact, it is the very realism of the film that worked for me --- it was all the scarier because there wasn’t much Hollywood exaggeration.  The two big ‘virus’ movies from the past were The Andromeda Strain and Outbreak (I’d love to throw Romero’s The Crazies in here, but that’s really more of a zombie movie).  Outbreak was a boring melodrama and though I love the Andromeda Strain, it is a slow, quiet, and sterile film.  Contagion, thankfully, moves quickly and isn’t about Dustin Hoffman’s divorce.  Though it is a tad cold, it isn’t as sterile as The Andromeda Strain.  It is a straight up telling of what a superbug epidemic would look like if it happened in today’s world.  

In addition to the fact that it isn’t an action movie, it also isn’t really character driven.  There are a couple of good characters, but the movie isn’t really about digging into them.  Thankfully, to offset the lack of character development here, they cast a ton of really talented actors that can make you care about them without having a huge back story.  Joining Paltrow is Matt Damon, Larry Fishburne, Monique Gabriela Curnen, John Hawkes, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, Elliot Gould, and more.  Normally, I’d say that a movie with little characterization would be a bad thing, but it works here, because the other focus, the story of the virus itself, is strong enough to stand on its own.

Food stops being delivered when the Teamsters refuse to go on the road, and crimes go unfettered as less and less cops show up for work every day.  The movie not only explores the outbreak itself as society starts to fall apart, but also intelligently raises a few other points and questions.  What do the pharmaceutical companies stand to gain from an outbreak like this?  Who got rich with the big influenza outbreak in the early 20th Century?  Where would the government be in this situation ---the same place they weren’t for New Orleans after Katrina?  Also --- there are people who claim that the CDC and even the Canadian Health authorities overreacted in the face of H1N1.  But if under reacting means that a billion people or more could die, isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?  And how do we know that it wasn’t their efforts that stopped the flow of H1N1?  Agree or disagree, it’s all good food for thought.

Of course, the movie looks stellar.  Soderbergh is the man.  The most subtle scene that freaked me out was right at the start, before they had started explaining anything about hand washing or germs.  They showed several shots of people performing everyday tasks, like using an ATM or holding onto a subway bar --- partly to set up the ‘world’ of the movie, but also as foreshadowing.  After each person would use the ATM or whatever, they would walk away, but the camera would stay on the ATM machine just a hair longer, or even pull focus to the object they were touching.  It becomes less subtle as the movie gets going, but it was an amazing way to subtly crank up the paranoia right from the get-go.

Okay, I’ve been touching this keyboard, so it’s time to go wash my hands!  Then I’m going to go buy a remote cabin in the woods for when society collapses.  Yup, this movie is going to stay with me for a few days, much like the Cormac Mccarthy book and movie The Road did a couple of years ago.

4 Dorks out of 5 on the Geek-o-Meter.  A hugely intelligent ‘what-if’ that is well constructed and well acted.