Contagion (2011)0

 Written by: Dennis Lam

Contagion(2011) seemed more like a doc­u­men­tary than a movie.

Contagion was pro­moted as a film with an extremely estab­lished cast. The actors and actresses in the film met my expec­ta­tion for act­ing qual­ity. Particularly, Laurence Fishburne and Matt Damon.

Laurence Fishburne, plays the role of Dr Ellis Cheever, a high-ranking offi­cial within the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC). He car­ries his role well by por­tray­ing an appro­pri­ate fig­ure of author­ity with com­pas­sion for his sub­or­di­nates and a lov­ing hus­band, torn between pro­fes­sional and per­sonal obligations. 

Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon), deals with his wife’s and stepson’s deaths from the dis­ease. He plays the role of a lov­ing father, des­per­ate to keep his only liv­ing fam­ily member, his daughter, well and alive. The chaos that ensued dur­ing the pan­demic stretched fam­ily ties between the two, but he spared no effort to pre­serve them.  

Although Contagion had an estab­lished cast, they were sep­a­rated into par­al­lel sto­ries. This is a rather spe­cial method of film­mak­ing but it some­how fell through. This, in my opin­ion, was the fac­tor that killed off the enter­tain­ment value of the movie and put it below expec­ta­tions. The afore­men­tioned fac­tor and the inclu­sion of sci­en­tific facts and jar­gon in the script that was inevitable in Contagion, caused it to be more of a doc­u­men­tary. If the script con­tained encoun­ters and drama among peo­ple from the par­al­lel sto­ries, the movie may have been much better.

Director Steven Soderbergh man­aged to have the actors and actresses in each par­al­lel story tie well together. Dr Cheever worked well with his second-in-command, Dr Ally Hextall(Jennifer Ehle), in tack­ling the pandemic. Mitch Emhoff and his daugh­ter fit­ted each other as father and daugh­ter respec­tively. Alan Krumwiede(Jude Law) filled his role as an arro­gant and unscrupu­lous blog­ger to expec­ta­tion. Finally, Dr Leonora Orantes(Marion Cotillard) and Sun Feng(Chin Han), an epi­demi­ol­o­gist in Hong Kong, suited each other in por­tray­ing a strained work­ing relationship. 

One extremely com­mend­able aspect of Contagion; would be it’s sound. Although the movie turned out below expec­ta­tions, sound was a major buffer for its enter­tain­ment value. The vol­ume, pitch, back­ground music and sound effects used were appro­pri­ate. For exam­ple, at the begin­ning of the film, peo­ple around the world were seen dying from the dis­ease. The sound for this seg­ment of the film kept me really awake and on edge. Chills crept up my spine as I watched those bit play­ers and extras die one by one. 

Contagion would have been a much bet­ter film if the plot was more cen­tralised. You should watch this movie if you are seek­ing infor­ma­tion on dis­eases, pan­demics and insight to human behav­iour dur­ing pan­de­mo­ni­ums. However, it may not be a good movie to go to for entertainment. 

If you ask me, this movie gets a 6/10.