Star-studded process . . .By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
"It's an ultrarealistic film about a pandemic, and that's the key phrase." Director Steven Soderbergh
The thought of a pandemic killing millions around the world is exciting in the thriller sense, but this is not the best film to bring the thrills: Steven Soderbergh's Contagion is about the onset of an epidemic, reminiscent of Outbreak (1995), which had a good measure of action and even memorable if one-dimensional characters played by Dustin Hoffman and Renee Russo. Contagion differs from other well-known virus films such as Omega Man (1971) and 12 Monkeys (1995) because they deal with the aftermath. My personal favorite is 28 Days Later (2002), in which the result of the epidemic is an interesting array of zombies.
In Contagion, Matt Damon and Kate Winslet, among many other stars, try their best while the film plays down the drama and plays up the process of finding the disease's source and a vaccine to counter it. In the disaster movie genre, the '70's were a rich mine with such star-filled epics as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), famous examples of larding the drama with enough star power to make us forget how thin the dramatic content is.
To give Contagion its due, it is not the conspiracy-riddled melodrama of Outbreak, which played on the fears of an Ebola-like virus. For the deconstruction of the steps along the virus disaster way, Contagion is a notable piece that works best as a high school health class lesson in the spread of a disease and the steps the CDC and WHO must take to search and destroy.
Those last two verbs suggest thrills and drama?neither is as present as the thought alone of the contagion. However, the film made me stop scratching my face the average few thousand times a day, and I move away more quickly from coughers.
John DeSando co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com