Spreading the Word About “Contagion”

Who’da thunk I’d watch adisaster movie and feel . . .  nostalgia?But that was my first reaction when viewing Contagion, the 2011 medicaldisaster movie directed by the very busy Steven Soderbergh. I first became aSoderbergh fan after seeing 1989’s sex, lies, and videotape, a modestbut emotionally dynamic chamber piece that won the Palme d’Or at the CannesFilm Festival and ushered in an era of adult-themed indies made by seriousyoung filmmakers. Since then, Soderbergh has had a solid career in film andtelevision, including Erin Brockovich, the multiple Oscar-winning Traffic,and a sexy George Clooney/Jennifer Lopez thriller, Out of Sight. Forvariety he’s helmed some lucrative franchises like Ocean’s Eleven andits sequels.

 When it was released in 2011,Contagion did nicely at the box office. Its impressive cast and far-flungsettings attracted viewers around the globe, eager to see such major stars asGwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, KateWinslet, and Jude Law fight off a worldwide pandemic. But I doubt anyone tookit terribly seriously. After all, in 2011 we hadn’t endured a true globalmedical disaster for almost 100 years. Not since 1918, and the latter days ofWorld War I, had the world seen the so-called Spanish Flu epidemic that tookthe life of my mother’s father, as well as millions of others. It was excitingto watch Paltrow and Winslet in the throes of a horrible virus, but we knewperfectly well that we and our loved ones were safe.

 That was then. Now that we’vebeen through 3½ years of COVID, I could watch Contagion from a new, moreenlightened perspective. A lot of what appears on screen seems all toofamiliar: the origin of the virus among tainted bats and pigs in a Chinesemarketplace; the spreading of the disease, in those first innocent days, fromsimple hand-to-hand contact; the fear behind every cough as the world starts tocatch on to what is happening; the grimly mounting statistics on the TV screen;the desperate urge for a vaccine that will return the world to the way it wasbefore. The filmmakers presciently show so many things that became all toofamiliar in 2020, like the turning of football stadiums into masshospitalization sites. And there’s Jude Law’s blogger character, who evolvesinto an anti-vaxer urging the public to avoid vaccination altogether. Soundfamiliar?

 Some things that are shown inthe film fortunately didn’t happen in real life. First of all, the film’seventual miracle vaccine is injected into the nasal cavity (yuck!), somethingwe fortunately haven’t had to deal with. Secondly, though some of us did helpstrip store shelves bare of toilet paper, we didn’t run out of food and findourselves making do with MREs, like the movie’s characters. Nor, at least in myexperience, did real-life vaccine injection sites devolve into vicious brawlsas people fought over scarce resources. Another of the film’s plot strands hasthe U.S. and its western allies cynically sending placebos overseas so as tohang onto the precious dosages for their own populations. In some ways we’vebeen very lucky that these hideous movie scenarios haven’t played out for real.

 Yet the movie overlooks someissues that we’ve had to acknowledge in the real world. Like: the fact thatdeaths from COVID have been very much linked to social class, with hard-workingethnic minorities (of which the film has very few) bearing the brunt of theinfection. Contagion’s innocence in such matters makes it seem ratherquaint. Still, we can’t say we weren’t warned.