Gwyneth Paltrow plays this generation’s Typhoid Mary in Steven Soderbergh’s new biohorror-blockbuster “Contagion.” The movie opens with Paltrow’s character Beth Emhoff coughing into her cellphone at O’Hare Airport. Beauteous Beth is returning from a business trip in Asia, where she gambled, ate and drank at a casino in Macau and then indulged in a literal layover in Chicago with a former boyfriend on her way back home to a far less exotic life with husband Mitch (Matt Damon) and her two children in Minneapolis.
Over the course of the 104-minute film, we discover that Beth was shedding a deadly virus everywhere she went, consigning her new-found friends at the casino, her erstwhile boyfriend in Chicago and her innocent young son Mark in Minneapolis to a swift and gruesome death from a new bat-and-pig virus called MEV-1, thereby launching a worldwide pandemic that will ultimately kill millions.
Perhaps not since Eve has one sexy woman been blamed for causing so much grief for so many.
Soderbergh uses the calm/dedicated Dr. Ellis Cheever (Lawrence Fishburne), the grim/dedicated Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet), the rebellious/dedicated Dr. Ian Sussman (Elliott Gould) and the brave/dedicated Dr. Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) to explain the science, which, according to The Scientist, is pretty damn accurate.
These selfless civil servants collectively destroy the Tea Party case that government can do nothing right, as all of the A-list actors put their lives on the line trying to save others. (The Scientist article notes that there is still no vaccine for ebola, yet the researchers in the movie strain credulity by producing a miracle cure in just a few months.)
But this is a thriller, not a NOVA special or a political polemic. The emotional heart of the movie follows cuckolded Mitch as he grapples with his grief and confusion, while trying to remain strong so that he can save their remaining child, teenage daughter Jory (Anna Jacoby-Heron). Armed with little more than a bottle of hand sanitizer and a father’s sonar that beeps loudly whenever his virginal daughter’s boyfriend tries to get too close, Damon portrays Mitch as a father who will do what it takes to keep her safe from the faceless evil around them.
The MEV-1 virus in the film is especially evil because it doesn’t just prey on the very young, the very old and the infirm, as most flu bugs do. Like the still-mysterious Spanish flu that caused the pandemic almost a century ago, this new bug strikes down healthy young people as well. Without a significant supply of an effective vaccine, all that people can do prevent infection is practice social isolation. No hugging, kissing or handshaking. The malls remain empty. Everyone home schools in this new America.
A friend said that she hoped the movie would instruct people on what to do no matter the threat that plunges our society into chaos. But what makes the contagious flu scenario in this film so frightening is that the pervasive fear of others robs us of the one thing that can really improve our chances of survival – the opportunity to pull together.
The two most chilling scenes involve Everyman Matt Damon realizing that it’s all on him. His attempt to get cash at a bank overrun by a desperate mob and the time when he stands in front of his living room window watching flashes of gunfire erupt like lightning inside the house across the street reinforce the theme that the crisis has made everyone strangers, so you cannot count on anyone anymore.
The villain in the piece is blogger Alan Krumweide, played by Jude Law. He promotes forsythia as a cure as part of a plot to manipulate stock prices. When we see Law’s character strutting around town in an expensive isolation suit made possible by his fraud, he seems to be warning us of the danger in cutting ourselves off from feeling the misery of others to the point where we find it morally acceptable to care only about ourselves.
Perhaps Soderbergh is trying to show us that our current level of social isolation is as dangerous as any virus. Many people were surprised to find we now live in a society where people at the two GOP presidential primary debates have lustily cheered for the deaths of their fellow man. The first time was when NBC moderator Brian Williams mentioned the death penalty in Texas and again when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked whether Republicans would pull the plug on a comatose young man without insurance. Has rugged individualism already devolved into I don’t give a damn for anyone else?
In contrast, Soderbergh offers a subplot about Dr. Leonora Orantes, played by Marion Cotillard, a World Health Organization researcher held hostage by a small community in Asia that ransoms her for a supply of the new vaccine. When she discovers that her captors have been duped into releasing her for nothing more than useless saline injections, she flees back to the village where we saw her teaching in an elementary school. We sense that her experience in that close-knit community has persuaded her that a shorter life spent among people who care is preferable to a longer life among people who don’t.
It seems worth considering that all the coming catastrophes looming on the horizon will be much worse if we fail to understand that tough times need not be desperate times if we work together to find fresh answers. Soderbergh may not have intended his simple thriller to carry so much freight, but it may well be that he did. Either way, it’s a lesson worth pondering.
Image of Gwyneth Paltrow by Lewis Dreamhamer – Flickr
Image of Jude Law by mimosveta – Flickr
Originally published on Bonnie’s Surviving Tough Times blog
