There’s no word short of “stunning” worth using to describe a film like Contagion. To even start to unravel the complex series of scenes and intricate dance of characters that make up the film is to quickly boggle one’s mind, even though as a linear package it tells a detailed and emotionally satisfying story of a global event of nearly unfathomable proportion. There’s also no phrase short of “gigantic, steel balls” to describe what it must have required to tackle a global pandemic that threatens to wipe out a significant portion of the planet’s human population, and to do so from its beginning to its end, while filling in extensive and realistic detail in between. Finally, there’s no superlative short of “gorgeous” to apply to a story that so delicately delivers a wide range of gratifying emotional payoffs amidst such a gargantuan human cataclysm. Soderbergh has once again engineered an obvious classic that is deceptively rewarding.
Something is spreading across the Earth, and it’s killing people faster than we can understand it. Beginning with a single woman traveling from Hong Kong, the virus quickly spreads across the globe and makes itself known as a threat of biblical proportion. People, families, and cities are affected without warning, and organizations across the earth quickly mobilize to try and contain and combat a disease that is clearly too advanced to be defeated before it cripples civilization itself. This is not a story of the apocalypse though– it is no easy tale of the end of the world. Even more this isn’t merely a zombie movie with no monsters. Rather, it is the grounded story of a worldwide, years-long scenario that touches every person on the planet before, as we always have historically, humanity is able to perhaps catch up, overcome, and survive. Wounded, but stronger for it.
Contagion tells this story with the widest lens possible, short of simply filming the planet in time-lapse from orbit. Within the film the highest health officials coordinate, while the most cutting-edge scientists study, and the earliest responders organize. The story leaves few watershed moments in the pandemic’s path un-captured and yet you will also glimpse a small story of brave sacrifice, one of fear-driven abduction, and yet another of circumstantial greed. It’s an incredibly complex web that features a dozen familiar faces –John Hawkes, Bryan Cranston, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Armin Rhode, Kate Winslet, Larry Clark, Demetri Martin, Elliot Gould, Chin Han– giving their all in roles large and small.
There are two primary stories driven by Laurence Fishburne, playing the highest level CDC official, and Matt Damon, the most isolated and immediately-affected citizen. Despite the film’s ruthless economy, these two characters are set-up, developed, and sent off with consistent detail throughout the film. As (or possibly more) importantly though, there are over half-a-dozen more stories waxing and waning through the rest of the movie of characters that are introduced, enriched, and paid-off in as few as three scenes, the sum of their screentime nothing compared to their relative impact. This is Soderbergh’s greatest feat: building character with stunning clarity and unbelievable efficiency. It’s a sophistication of filmmaking that retroactively empowers Scott Z. Burns to have written a script made up of laser-focused scenes that together seem scattered and episodic until you pull back far enough to see the clear, lean narrative that they’ve created between beginning and end. It’s also a stunning display of character-driven filmmaking that could only have been accomplished by a master director capable of slicing these people open and showing us their hearts, fears, and desires without wasting a frame of film.
Make no mistake, Contagion is a terse movie that often unfolds in unglamorous locations like office buildings and sterile labs, but by virtue of the intriguing dialogue and character dynamics at no point does it drag. The film is very beautiful as Soderbergh (who is also credited as the Director of Photography) milks from his RED camera (with which he is now quite familiar) some of the most beautiful images of his career. This deserves to be seen on the largest screen with the best sound as much as any cacophonous mess of swords, aliens, guns, or robots that’s invaded screens this summer. The locations may be spare, but the photography is rich with deep shadows and glowing highlights. Naturally Soderbergh is unafraid to play with unusual editing techniques and to film things from odd angles and points of view. While there’s not a wasted moment of unnecessary flare, these moments –be they intimate handheld shots with off-axis focus, or tilt-shifted time-lapses– serve to cut into the characters as fast and as deep as possible, while preventing the film from growing visually sterile.
Also jazzing up the rather spare environments and intense drama is a haunting score from Cliff Martinez. While the compositions occasionally tread dangerously close to outright emulation of recent work from Trent Reznor and Hans Zimmer, it contains a huge array of original sounds and novel approaches that make it its own special score. Paired with a superb sound mix, the score definitely makes Contagion as remarkable of a cinematic experience for your ears as it is for your eyes, brain, and heart.
Vastly epic in narrative scale and decidedly human in emotional scale Contagion is ultimately the biggest film of the year. It’s an entertaining, mainstream thriller brave enough to inject no opera where it doesn’t belong, and no grandstanding around small moments that don’t need it. Instead it relies on the potency of meaningful actions and the audience’s emotional imagination to imbue the drama with impact. You’ll leave the theater as eager to see the film again as you will be to wash your hands and find a face mask. Featuring a nearly perfect ensemble cast and a flawlessly engineered story, Contagion will assuredly be a classic among those that can stand the cold, paranoia-inducing scenario it so beautifully captures.
Rating: 
Out of a Possible 5 Stars
13 comments
Whoa. Reading this just made my tittes shake. I am officially motherfucking stoked!
That review, good sir, was nothing short of poetry. POETRY. But I fear you’ve raised my expectations to impossibly high levels.
That’s a fucking superlative review Renn – your game keeps getting raised. By you. You keep raising your game. I’m leaving that first one in to warn people that grammar torture is really.
Fucking brilliant review, Renn. I was already seeing this but now I’m psyched!
I really wasn’t super-excited about this from the trailers. It looks like the kind of over-dramatic prestige pic that’s a bore to sit through. Even with the crazy good cast, I wasn’t super-excited, but the presence of Soderbergh piqued my interest. It sounds like he really elevates this to greatness though, which is awesome to hear. I’ll definitely be checking this out now, mostly on the strength of this review.
i couldnt disagree more. the movie just drags on without any sort of climax. it made you feel the whole time that something major was going to happen then just fizzled to the credits.
“no grandstanding around small moments that don’t need it.” I’ve been anxious to see such a film lately that understands this. Will check
I love great films, I love tense thrillers relying on scripts instead of effects, I love apocalyptic drama… but I get intensely nervous over the idea of pandemics and get sleepless nights from the idea of them. Really want to see this but at the same time fear that if I do, it’ll be worry-worry-worry for me for quite a while. Difficult choice!
I have to say that I disagree on most counts regarding this review. Every time this movie pulls back from the sterile narrative regarding the chaos and clockwork machinations of the response to the disease in order to try to deliver some kind of ‘character’ moment, it failed.
Not only that, but there is no clear narrative here. There is no climax, no thing being worked toward, as the movie lasts much longer than you would expect it to. And the final scene is pointless and adds nothing to the previous movie. It only serves to validate something we were told within thirty minutes.
@TapaidhNaomh – Did you even go see this movie or maybe accidentally sat through something else?
I am totally baffled when I hear people complaining that they don’t understand the point of the last scene. The last scene is the point of the whole movie. I don’t want to spoil it but, fuck, is it that hard to understand what Soderbergh was saying there?
What was he saying? Wash your hands after you handle raw pork?
This movie was brilliant and honest. One of my favorite scenes was a death scene (of a major character) where an attempt at kindness is unfulfilled and left just hanging. Both haunting and absolutely real.
I’m not sure what ‘last scene’ people are bitching about. The final character scene which was absolutely gorgeous or the final summation that from a narrative point of view wasn’t ‘necessary’ but still had a way of hitting home the central point of the ease of pandemic. Anyone complaining about a boring movie just needs to rent Transformers 3 and be satisfied with loud noises.
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