Contagion (2011)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on September 15, 2011 @ tonymacklin.net.

Don't touch that computer screen!

You don't know where it's been -- or who has coughed on it. Or who has made contact with it.

In Contagion, plain surfaces are deadly. And -- like governments -- computers lie.

Contagion is a tale about a contemporary epidemic -- viral and lethal.

Miraculously, Contagion is pro-science. People still are dumb, but science saves. As always people are likely to become panic-stricken mobs, in mindless pursuit of self-preservation.

Science tries to resist panic and searches for a cure.

There are obstacles -- ignorance, exploitation, greed, but in Contagion scientific knowledge is the hope.

As Contagion begins, Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is in an airport on her return from Hong Kong. Her cough and touch infect others. In Hong Kong the disease also is spreading. Pandemic starts slowly, then explodes. It becomes a worldwide killer.

Beth is among its first victims. Her husband Mitch (Matt Damon), who is not infected, tries to save what's left of his shattered family -- his daughter Jody (Anna Jcoby-Heron) -- as the world around him is in chaos.

Across the world scientists and doctors are trying to stop the furious scourge. They don't have any answer, but they desperately try to find one.

In Contagion most of the scientists are brave. Despite a few self-serving acts, crisis brings out the best in most of them. What a concept.

Science can be subservient to pharmaceutical companies and direly cruel to animals, but science is man's salvation in Contagion.

Evolution lives. A female scientist says, "I'll ask the monkeys." Later she injects herself with a potential antidote as a Nobel Prize-winning scientist once did.

Religion is almost absent from Contagion. There are shots of an empty church, an empty synagogue, an Asian school has a cross over it, and one nurse is a nun, but hectoring Evangelists are nowhere to be seen.

Contagion has very little baggage. The cast doesn't overact. Only Jude Law as an Internet maven is bombastic, as his brash character Alan Krumwiede cravenly takes advantage of the opportunities of a crisis.

Kate Winslet gives perhaps her most muted performance as a caring scientist. The other doctor/scientists -- Laurence Fishbourne, Jennifer Ehle, Marion Cotillard, et al. -- are all played as competent, humane professionals.

Mark Damon is the most human factor as the bereaved husband and father. He effectively brings fallible personality to his character.

The direction by Steven Soderbergh is deft and sharp. The screenplay by Scott Z. Burns is intelligent and not exploitative.

I didn't want to see Contagion, since I can be neurotic, paranoid, and a hypochondriac.

But Contagion is neither a Lifetime movie nor a potboiler.

Contagion is a clear-eyed vision of a potential, modern horror that shows science in battle.

Contagion fights the good fight.