Contagion

Contagion (2011): CALL Discussion Group Notes

Director Steven Soderbergh -- Sex Lies & Videotape, Kafka, The Limey, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Solaris, Oceans 11/12/13/14/15/16,etc., The Good German, Che, The Informant. 

Returning from a Macao conference, Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) arranges for a layover in Chicago to tryst with her ex-lover. When she returns to her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) and son Clark in Minnesota she succumbs to a virus and dies. Clark dies at school. The virus speeds round the globe killing hundreds of thousands. Beth’s lover’s wife watches him carried off on a stretcher. 

Internet “journalist”  Alan (Jude Law) exploits the mystery first by trying to sell a story blaming it on mercury fish poisoning, then by claiming to have contacted it and cured himself with the drug Forstina. In Switzerland WHO doctor Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) suspects Beth may have started the epidemic. In Atlanta CDC doctor Ellis Cheever (Lawrence Fishburne) sends Dr Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) to Minnesota to investigate the disease. Homeland Security suspects it’s a terrorist attack. 

Alan accuses Dr Sussman (Elliot Gould) and the CDC of profiteering. Sussman ignores government orders to shut down his more insecure lab and to destroy the virus samples. As a result he manages to make a stable version of the virus, enabling the development of a vaccine. Mears is stricken and Cheever can’t get her out. In her last action she tries to toss her coat to the shivering victim on the next bed. Cheever urges his wife/girlfriend Aubrey (Sanaa Lathan) to flee Chicago immediately, but she divulges the secret and he will have to face an investigation. Dr Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) notices an effect on the test animals and begins to test the serum on herself. 

Meanwhile the society turns into savage chaos, with rioting, looting, hoarding, murder. A policeman tries to arrest Alan and seize his ill-gotten $4.5 million gain, but Alan’s followers pay his bail and the fraud triumphs. Orantes’  Chinese colleague, whose mother was among the villagers killed by it, has Orantes kidnapped for the ransom of 100 doses of the new serum. To her horror the government cheats the villagers with a placebo. In the serum lottery Cheever injects his Aubrey but secretly gives his own shot to his janitor’s son. 

Mitch, who had forcibly kept Jory (Anna Jacoby-Heron), his teen daughter from his earlier marriage, apart from her boyfriend Andy (Brian O’Donnell), now arranges a private prom for her in their living room, welcoming the tuxedoed Andy as her date. When Mitch gets the camera to photograph them he finds the last shots of Beth and breaks down crying. He is heartened by seeing the young couple dance, both secured by the serum.

1. Why do Disaster films have an all-star cast? What’s the effect in Gwyneth Paltrow (who usually carries the film) dying off right away?
2. What does seeing Elliot Gould as a rebel doctor (Sussman, who against orders manages to recreate the virus) remind you of? 
3. Does this film have political import? What’s it saying (i) from the left, or (ii) from the right?
4. In the opening global survey why are we given the various population figures?
5. Why do we enjoy disaster films?
6. The film’s opening: On a dark screen we hear a cough. Can we briefly wonder if that’s in the theatre not the film? How does that connect with our having “Barnsey’s” physical perspective on the mouth mask being put on him? Why the September opening for a film about a nightmarish extension of flu symptoms? Is that something to sniff at?
7. The ending reverts to Day 1: Beth shakes hands with the Chinese chef in Macao, who has just handled the pig contaminated by a banana-eating bat. How do you read the ending? Has this Disaster flick been redefined as a Whodunit? What’s the effect of bringing the two genres together in this way?
8. Compare two series of shots. In the first we get a sequence of closeups on mundane objects: Beth’s peanuts, a file holder, etc. In the second we get shots of eerie vacancy: empty streets, gyms, etc. How do the series work together?
9. What’s the connection here: (i) The janitor’s kid has Attention Deficit Disorder. (ii) As Dr Mears points out, a plastic shark will keep people out of the water, but grisly warnings on cigarette packages fail to deter.
10. Disaster films attack our complacency and pride. How does that play into all the scenes of advanced technology? Mitch referring to his stepson as “the mighty Clark”? 
11. Why is our first victim (Beth) given a deliberate five-hour layover (so to speak) so she can have a tryst with her exlover in Chicago? (Clue: Pat Robertson would like this.)
12. Compare the movie references. Jude Law cites monster films: “King Kong, Godzilla, Frankenstein, all in one.” Fishburne cites the more natural threat of the Disaster film: “The birds have already weaponized the bird flu.” (aka, What’s it all about, Alfred?)
13. How do the epidemic and the net journalist plot lines reflect on each other? What connects/distinguishes them?
14. Does the epidemic work as a metaphor? Can it point to something beyond disease? What about Jude Law’s cynical mentions of Katrina and Wall Street?
15. What distinguishes the heroes from the villains? How is Fishburne complicated on this count? And the nurses who strike because they can’t do anything? The 25% absenteeism among law enforcement?
16. What’s the point in Mitch’s changing treatment of his daughter’s boyfriend Andrew? How do you read the teens’ snow angels, in context?
17. What does the Jude Law character represent?
18. Given that the epidemic is traced back to a less than fastidious Chinese chef, and the Chinese kidnap a woman doctor as hostage for vaccine, is the film racist? What contrary evidence is there?
19. Why is most of the score electronic music?
20. What’s the point in this cut: From a scene of urban rioters Soderbergh cuts to Mitch and his daughter being stopped at the Wisconsin border and denied exit, under state quarantine.
21. What’s the meaning of Fishburne giving the janitor’s kid his own vaccine and Winslett tossing her coat towards the guy shivering in the next bed? The Americans (at the Chinese insistence) buying Dr Orantes’ freedom with a case full of placebos?
22. What does the prom symbolize?
23. Does the film have anything in common with Soderbergh’s other work?

What thematic use can you make out of this dialogue:

1. “Print media is dying. Dying.” Alan.
2. “Start thinking with your head, not your heart. “ That’s the janitor to Dr Cheever.
3. “How are we defining ‘contained’?”
4. “Call EVERYONE.” Cheever to Mears.
5. “Wouldn’t want you to catch cold.”
6. “It’s figuring us out faster than we’re figuring it out.”
7. “Our first job is to find Ground Zero.”
8. “We need to make sure nobody knows before everybody knows.”
9. “The best defense is social distancing.”
10. “There are 50 states, 50 health departments, 50 protocols.”
11. Can’t we put the new vaccine in the water, like flouride, to cure a lot of people at once?
12. “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t touch anything.”
13. “Blogging is not writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.” Sussman.