Contagion is creepy and frightening, but it’s not particularly effective as a film. This is paradoxical because it is hard to conceive of any other medium in which the subject of Contagion could be presented so efficiently, realistically, and, in some ways, brutally. Steven Soderburgh’s movie about a pandemic deploys a a half-dozen big international stars and sends them rushing from conference room to office to laboratory at breakneck pace as they attempt to manage the viral disease crisis. Rapid cutting and lucid graphics communicate the maximum amount of information possible in the shortest period of time – at one hour and 45 minutes, Contagion teaches you more than you want to know about epidemic disease. The fundamental problem with the film is that sickness and its treatment is not dramatic – there’s no real conflict, no room for character development, no narrative trajectory. People get sick, seemingly at random and die; scientists labor in brightly lit labs; more people die; society collapses – at least, a bit; and, then, a vaccine is found. Soderburgh is essentially an experimental film maker – at least, some of his pictures have a quality of radical disengagement and understatement very unlike most Hollywood pictures and Contagion is almost ludicrously de-dramatized. The director seems to fear that any image or sequence might be condemned as excessive or too dramatic and so everything is shot documentary-style, flatly lit and drably staged in the most unprepossessing locations possible. Most of the action consists of people speaking to one another in scientific jargon in conference rooms. Plot points are baldly conveyed by filmed lectures, cell-phone calls, screen shots of internet sites. Soderburgh has operated in a radically non-dramatic format before – much of his four hour film about Che Guevera had this quality and his earlier picture with Matt Damon, a documentary-style account of the Archer Daniels Midland scandal, The Informant was also quick, lucid, and shot in a way to avoid anything like emphasis on any individual sequence or image. Films of this sort beg a question – if the material is treated in a obstinately non-dramatic manner, then, why really should we care? We might as well watch a TV documentary about the subject. Contagion raises the same question – if the subject is to be treated without any shred of drama or dramatic emphasis, then, wouldn’t we be better off simply watching a Nova show about epidemic disease. Another criticism relates to the cast: in a film of this sort, the presence of movie stars seems a distraction. We are continually picking out famous faces in the crowd of lab technicians and CDC workers and this distracts from the movie’s effectiveness. I admire this film without really liking it – it’s a movie about sickness and so everything looks pale, attenuated, the colors are ugly, the locations devoid of any scenic interest; much of the film is set in Minnesota and I don’t know many films that so effectively convey the grey-blue hideousness of a Minnesota winter.
Contagion is creepy and frightening, but it’s not particularly effective as a film. This is paradoxical because it is hard to conceive of any other medium in which the subject of Contagion could be presented so efficiently, realistically, and, in some ways, brutally. Steven Soderburgh’s movie about a pandemic deploys a a half-dozen big international stars and sends them rushing from conference room to office to laboratory at breakneck pace as they attempt to manage the viral disease crisis. Rapid cutting and lucid graphics communicate the maximum amount of information possible in the shortest period of time – at one hour and 45 minutes, Contagion teaches you more than you want to know about epidemic disease. The fundamental problem with the film is that sickness and its treatment is not dramatic – there’s no real conflict, no room for character development, no narrative trajectory. People get sick, seemingly at random and die; scientists labor in brightly lit labs; more people die; society collapses – at least, a bit; and, then, a vaccine is found. Soderburgh is essentially an experimental film maker – at least, some of his pictures have a quality of radical disengagement and understatement very unlike most Hollywood pictures and Contagion is almost ludicrously de-dramatized. The director seems to fear that any image or sequence might be condemned as excessive or too dramatic and so everything is shot documentary-style, flatly lit and drably staged in the most unprepossessing locations possible. Most of the action consists of people speaking to one another in scientific jargon in conference rooms. Plot points are baldly conveyed by filmed lectures, cell-phone calls, screen shots of internet sites. Soderburgh has operated in a radically non-dramatic format before – much of his four hour film about Che Guevera had this quality and his earlier picture with Matt Damon, a documentary-style account of the Archer Daniels Midland scandal, The Informant was also quick, lucid, and shot in a way to avoid anything like emphasis on any individual sequence or image. Films of this sort beg a question – if the material is treated in a obstinately non-dramatic manner, then, why really should we care? We might as well watch a TV documentary about the subject. Contagion raises the same question – if the subject is to be treated without any shred of drama or dramatic emphasis, then, wouldn’t we be better off simply watching a Nova show about epidemic disease. Another criticism relates to the cast: in a film of this sort, the presence of movie stars seems a distraction. We are continually picking out famous faces in the crowd of lab technicians and CDC workers and this distracts from the movie’s effectiveness. I admire this film without really liking it – it’s a movie about sickness and so everything looks pale, attenuated, the colors are ugly, the locations devoid of any scenic interest; much of the film is set in Minnesota and I don’t know many films that so effectively convey the grey-blue hideousness of a Minnesota winter.
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