Contagion
トーク情報- wotsuzokusa
wotsuzokusa Contagion has, perhaps a little surprisingly, become the flashback film of the moment precisely because it’s not an outrageous worst-case scenario but an eerily realistic one. When a notable actor dies very early on, said A-lister does not return from the dead, arms outstretched and craving the taste of brains. Aliens are not responsible for the virus attacking humans; nor, for that matter, is it the result of foreign agents disrupting the American way of life, despite what fearmongers on a particular conservative news network would have you believe. What may be the single most chilling aspect of Soderbergh and Burns’ heavily researched scenario is how random the MEV-1’s creation is. “The wrong pig met up with the wrong bat, ” a scientist notes after the genetic makeup of the virus is discovered. It’s almost a throwaway statement, until you get to the end and the film shows you exactly how “Day 1” played out. A bat happens to defecate in a pig pen. A little porcine fellow happens to consume it. He’s brought to a casino in Macao to be prepared for someone’s dinner; the chef happens to shake the hand of a visiting businesswoman. She happens to blow on the dice of the businessman playing next to her at a craps table. All it takes is the right series of wrong moves.
- wotsuzokusa
wotsuzokusa It’s everything that happens after that narratively/before that scene chronologically, however, that has likely made Contagion the single most urgent movie of the moment, and thus the most (re)viewed. It’s a disaster movie, but it’s also a pandemic procedural, one devoted to charting the how, when, where, why — and most important, what happens next. The film’s CDC and WHO representatives are competent, intelligent, and organized; they have mobilized to the best of their collective abilities. Kate Winslet’s doctor puts her life on the line; a San Francisco medical professional (played by Elliot Gould) does defy direct orders to destroy his samples but ends up uncovering a key piece of the puzzle. The Centers for Disease Control researcher who first charts the when-bat-meets-pig origins ends up testing a vaccine on herself, willfully ignoring protocol … but voila, she now proves there’s a workable vaccine. For every scene involving blogger Jude Law cashing in on the chaos or Matt Damon’s dad staving off people in the throws of extreme prepare-anoia, there are several sequences in which our better angels are on display, and there’s a sense that there are actually adults in the room.
- wotsuzokusa
wotsuzokusa And that last bit in particular is something we really aren’t getting right now when we hear about travel bans in lieu of testing, delayed responses instead of determination to make up for lost time, past leaders being defensively blamed rather than current ones acting with accountability. In that sense, maybe Contagion really is escapism. Despite the gruesome scenes of people dying and overall sense that society is just one viral video away from sheer anarchy, it’s a hopeful movie. Trust in scientists, and the innate decency in people, and we will prevail. Things fall apart, and then you put them back together again. Use common sense. Pray to your respective gods but also, y’know, wash your hands. It will get bad, the movie tells us. But it will also get better. People are probably flocking to this movie to see what may be in store for us in the next month or so. That last bit of optimism it offers us couldn’t have come at a better time.
- wotsuzokusa
wotsuzokusa Tense, tightly plotted, and bolstered by a stellar cast, Contagion is an exceptionally smart -- and scary -- disaster movie.