The Sauced Bulletin

Contagion is a big, BIG movie.  I don’t mean like Avatar, break all the box office records-big.  I don’t even mean like “important” big.  Contagion attempts to tell a really large-scale story with a giant cast well known actors.  This is the film’s strength, but also its biggest weakness.  But don’t get me wrong, it was pretty good!

By now you know what the story is.  I mean the posters alone are about as clear as can be, brandishing the awesome tagline:  ”Don’t talk to anyone.  Don’t touch anyone.”  A disease for which we have no cure begins spreading across the world, first in Asia before it is brought to America by none other than Gwyneth Paltrow.  Thousands get sick, millions die, and the various agencies of Earth (the CDC, WHO, etc.) feebly struggle to find a cure.  The premise is terrifying in itself, rendered for us on the screen in stark, ice cold realism.

The level of quality with which the story is told is no surprise given that this is a Steven Soderbergh movie.  This is his first big mainstream movie in a while, after that giant Che miniseries thing and that weird Sasha Grey movie The Girlfriend Experience, and it’s immediately apparent that he’s still got it.  The story builds with palpable dread from the very beginning and, while the subject matter is pretty grim, the whole thing is beautifully photographed.  Striking lyrical moments abound in which we see empty streets littered with garbage, empty airport terminals, long stretches of highway devoid of life.  This movie drips with style.

The cast, as I’m sure you can tell, is phenomenal.  So many good actors!  And all of them give solid performances (Kate Winslet and Matt Damon in particular DUH).  I even liked Jude Law as a loose-cannon blogger with a prosthetic snaggletooth.  Maybe this will spur him into making good movies again.  BUT, the giant awesome cast also becomes Contagion’s biggest problem.  There are just too many of them. EVERYONE is in this movie!  I think I was actually in it at one point.  In trying to tell such a huge story with such massive scope (the CDC finding a cure, the WHO tracking its origin, a crazy blogger and the government, a father who loses his family, etc.), we are kept at a distance from these people.  It is difficult to engage with any of the main characters emotionally, simply because we don’t get to spend enough time with them.  This is legitimately disappointing because a great film could have been made from almost any one of the primary story lines.  Contagion ends up being less powerful and less scary than it could be, and ends up being just a cool movie.

But it is definitely good and worth your time!  It’s interesting to see what is probably a very realistic depiction of how things would go down in the face of a global pandemic.  Society would collapse, the government would lie to us and act too late, and people would go all Lord of the Flies on each other.  And, like I said, there are great performances and some awesome visuals in here.  It’s a solid movie, but far from Soderbergh’s best.  Thank god he said he isn’t actually retiring yet (he hinted at this being his last film, then took it back) because he is still the fucking man.  So go see Contagion, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T TOUCH ANYONE.  Don’t even touch your ticket!  Wear gloves.  Don’t touch your seat even, you know just hover above it.  Or sit on the floor.  WAIT DON’T TOUCH THE FLOOR!  OR THE ARMRESTS!  This is going to be tough, but still try to see the movie.  Definitely.