Thoughts on: Contagion

The first thing I wish to address is that what's been said about this film (a quote along the lines of 'it'll do to the common cold what jaws did to sharks') is just sheer exaggeration. The film is certainly effective but luckily I didn't leave the cinema fearing 'to touch anything' (this isn't to say the film isn't good at what it wishes to achieve, simply that there is a wee bit of hype surrounding it in terms of its greatness)

The main draw for me of contagion was the look at the start of a post apocalyptic society on the very brink of collapse. Most films set after a pandemic skip over the events that lead to the changed world (think 28 days later waking up in a hospital-ness). The ideas that are explored in contagion as a result of the breakout feel fresh and unexplored, the ideas have also obviously been thought through, because it is likely in the event the governments would instil things such as wrist-bands to show people have been immunised, and thus it is safe for them to wander the streets. The level of detail is what is impressive. There's nothing particularly scary held in the film, it's reactions to the disease most daunting (at one point bodies are buried in bin bags because there's a shortage of body bags), another sees a woman know she's got the disease and has to come to terms with her imminent death.

Its difficult to summarise the plot of the film beyond a simple mention of the pandemic, and this is due to the many sub-plots within the story. There are about 6, meaning each character and their problems etc probably gets about 20 minutes of screen time if not less. This runs 2 clear risks, the first being that character development may go nowhere. This is not a problem due to the fact that there are so many big name actors in the film they are easily up to the challenge of character development in such a short period of time. The second is the plot runs a risk of becoming 'messy' (too much going on and whatnot). Luckily due to the genre this messiness doesn't seem out of place or jarring, instead it gives the sense of an overarching struggle against the disease rather than us following one isolated struggle not really representing the whole world at the time.

My personal favourite performance within the plot is Matt Damon, over the course of the story the start of his sub-plot (emotionally wise) becomes forgotten. With one simple scene set in a wardrobe the whole story of chasing the disease and vaccines and all that is forgotten in an instant and the whole film is back to him, I personally felt a bit guilty at overlooking the characters feelings somewhat and I hope this was intended, because if so it was damn effective (intentionally vague to avoid spoilers!).

The only real flaw I have with the story is something you won't really understand until a few hours after the film, when you stop and look back at the story, it just doesn't really move. At the time it seems to be, but you look back and they had so many different routes they could have taken parallel to fighting the illness (the fallout of the event) and a few of them are set up for some perfect screen time, but they're just never followed up. An example of this being the neighbours of one character seem to be shot, he goes and investigate and he simply finds a gun and walks off. Nothing else, no mass murders, that's the extent of the physical violence within the plot, and in a sense that's disappointing. However I must say this isn't really a bad point, more of a way they could have improved an already rather strong storyline, just disappointing they decided to keep their proverbial arms out of all of the cookie jars they could have placed them in along the way with this plot.

My favourite part of the film- The birthday lottery to determine the order of who will receive the vaccine. Brilliant idea!

Overall : 8/10

-James