I think a lot of people
will be disappointed by this film, and I'll be disappointed in turn if
they are, because it doesn't do what it could have done, and for that
it should be praised.
 |
| Not as sensational as its tagline. |
Present day Hong Kong
and Gwyneth Paltrow is returning to the US after a business trip,
leaving a viral trail as she touches glasses, pays by card, and opens
doors. Every instance of contact is lingered on by the camera, giving
you a vision of the inevitable. She is patient zero, and she's
bringing the contagion home. Over the next hour and a half we watch
the ripple effect caused by human interaction, social convention and
genuinely felt inevitability.
With a name like
'Contagion' you could be forgiven for thinking that everything this
film has to offer has been done before. The end of the world? An
unstoppable, inescapable, horrific disease that spreads rapidly and
kills painfully? Seen it before. You might expect it to have a lot in
common with a zombie pandemic, with I Am Legend and Dead Island and
you'd be wrong.
This is not a survivor
tale, any more than it's about Americans sticking it to nature. It's
not about humanity banding together in its darkest hour, it's not
about sensationalising, or personalising, or rationalising tragedy.
A concept is taken, a
'what if', and it is examined – under a microscope. What if this
happened, what if it really happened? Contagion tells that story, or
stories to be precise. Because there is no one tale here, no
one perspective. Many story-tellers will find the angle. Journalists
are trained to do it, writers are born to do it. Take a concept, and
tell it from a view point, from an angle that has meaning. Sometimes
when you do this, you can lose sight of the big picture. Of course,
that might be the idea. Titanic: take a grand event, and bore down to
one story among thousands. Humanise it, sensationalise it. We can
still find stories to spin out of that tragedy today, such as the
initial premise of Downton Abbey – an heir lost at sea, and all the
political and dynastic wranglings that then must follow.
Contagion is able to
tell a weave of stories, from a panorama of angles, almost none of
which crossover, and still maintain a coherent chronological
narrative around a core theme – the contagion. In doing so it
creates more of a docurama than it does a movie. This certainly isn't
a Hollywood blockbuster. This isn't special effects and Michael Bay
and George A Romero. It's entertainment, yes, but, for most of the
film, that seems secondary. The pacing is more in tune with an
Attenborough nature show. If you listen very carefully, you can
almost hear him describing the trials and tribulations of the
characters as they struggle to survive in an inhospitable habitat.
It brings to the fore
every aspect of humanity when faced with mortality. Altruism is mixed
in equal measure with opportunism, professionalism with paranoia, and
loyalty with imperfection.
It resists the urge,
repeatedly, to deteriorate into a B-movie horror-fest, tempering its
drama and rooting itself thoroughly in a believable and recognisable
reality. It deserves a lot of respect for keeping its path steady,
and doing what a lot of films won't dare to do. Despite its tag line,
it didn't pander to our innate fears. It was almost objective.
Contagion: This is what happens. Live with it. Deal with it. It's not
hopeless... It's just futile.
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