Author: Maria Chzhen
Date: 25 April 2020
Contagion is a very realistic movie about a pandemic. It came out in 2011, and what can I say? I feel that Scott Z. Burns scripted the current events of the world. And then, he gave them to us in the form of a movie back in 2011.
The movie begins on the 2nd day of the supposed outbreak. We get to know how the virus initially spread. There is a whole scene that emphasizes the human contact and shows us how viruses, these living entities, spread. Throughout that scene, the only words that race through my mind are: "GERMS!"
The movie shows us what happened to the family of the people who were affected and died. From that point, several stories begin to intertwine.
One of the stories is about Dr. Erin Mears. The doctor was played by none other than Kate Winslet! She is a health professional in the World Health Organization. Mears is out there on the front lines, trying to get more information on the virus, its mortality rate, and basically, how dangerous it is.
A different plotline follows Alan Krumwiede, a conspiracy theorist that tries to lie to everyone online about a supposed "cure" for the virus. Jude Law was the actor that played Alan. Law's character is the exact opposite of Kate Winslet's character. Alan doesn't care about facts; he cares about profit. Krumwiede is a charlatan, while Dr. Mears is an actual professional.
Another story is about the husband of the first victim, Mitch Emhoff. His wife Beth contracted the virus in Chicago, and she has infected her son. It turns out that she was patient 0 later in the movie!
Well, you get the atmosphere. The movie starts on day 2 of the outbreak. We don't know more of the virus than the CDC or WHO. We, the viewers, are just as confused as the health experts are, and expect the worst to happen. The movie managed to predict the scammers who'd try to profit off of a biological catastrophe like this. Up to this point, everything has gone as "planned" by the movie, which is scary. Except for the nature and type of the virus, obviously. And this is concerning.
The producer was Steven Soderbergh. The movie doesn't have people as the main characters - those are just background characters. The only important name present in the film is the virus that we follow - its beginnings, the spread, how it infected. We see how much it affects people - the population starts to panic and stops being civil. Someone begins to panic-buy, someone else robs a store. People started protesting against the government's measures. The virus shows the real face of the mortals - creatures that only want to survive no matter what. We see the actions that governments take. It's like we can see the future laid out and explained to us (with visual examples) in 106 minutes. At the time the movie came out, everybody considered it unrealistic. But in the recent events of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are coming back to rewatch the film out of curiosity, and unsurprisingly, finding many similarities with the current circumstances. How did we, as the human race, miss the warnings and get so arrogant? Why did we allow the new pandemic to happen even after Soderbergh told us about it?
If you are into movies like "Outbreak (1995)", you should check out Contagion. Contagion is more realistic, in my opinion, and not as overdramatic. There isn't lots of character development, that's why it is more like the real world.
Josie Rourke
Roman Polanski
Michael Gracey
John Hughes
Dan Scanlon
Stanley Kubrick