saw 'contagion' last night and i woke up around 5 a.m. because i had to pee and then i had that creepy feeling that maybe i had been having a bad dream and felt kinda scared :\
i never really think of myself as susceptible to this sort of thing and feel that i was desensitized at an early age (watching 'poltergeist' on HBO at like 8 -- it was the '80s -- will do that, i believe). i have a half morbid fascination, half intellectual curiosity with apocalypse-ism (there must be a fancypants academic term for this out there somewhere) and i guess the possibility that the millions of surfaces i touched just even going to the movie theater last night could lead to deathly infection if there was an outbreak is fodder for an eerie feeling in the middle of the night.
what i like about the film is that it isn't overly sentimental, and there was only really like two semi-hokey parts where i felt the music was a little overly emotional or that soderbergh's attempt to remind us of random-acts-of-human-kindness were a tad bit contrived -- which is a pretty good achievement, i'd say. the film maintains an icy, eerie vibe and remains mostly objective about the ins and outs of how a pandemic might go down these days.
the film begins on "day 2" and it isn't until the very last few scenes that the events of "day 1" are revealed and the process of how the disease got its start is illustrated for us step-by-step. i was drinking wine in the theater, so i even missed the most overtly 'political' message -- maybe the only political message in the film -- and it wasn't until i was discussing the ending with my friend (i was sorta sad and offended that the disease originates in china -- i feel like they are always the villain in these sorts of scenarios) and she pointed out that blame is actually placed on the U.S.! sadly, i am sure i am not the only one who missed this detail in my typical tipsy, air-headed sunday-mental state. we see a bulldozer with the logo of the north american company that the patient zero (gwenyth paltrow plays the marketing exec who goes to china representing this company) works for cutting down banana trees where the bats hang out. we know from early-on in the film that the disease stems from an unfortunate encounter between a bat and a pig. as the tree is bulldozed, the bat's home is compromised and he flies into a pig farming building and hangs in the rafters and either poop or something he was eating falls (can't remember which, sorry) and the pig beneath him eats it and is then sold to a farmer in a little cage -- it's all very depressing and ripe material for a PETA supporter. then we see the chinese chef where paltrow's character, beth, was having dinner handling the raw pig meat asked to step away from the kitchen and so he wipes his hands on his apron (he doesn't wash them! perhaps the film's primary moral message is for cleanliness) and then goes to meet beth, shakes her hand, and then we already know that both chef and exec are dead two days later......... all because an evil U.S. corporation displaces a bat. the film has come full circle in a very dickensian ending -- we get our just desserts for exploiting their country in the first place. i'd argue that the other point the filmmakers are suggesting is that our planet is over-populated, which is another reason these meetings between two unlikely animals takes place. exactly how overly-populated we are is made clear when we are shown how the disease spreads from city to city and each time a new city is introduced their population number is noted as well as the name of the city (i.e. san francisco, population -- i think they lied and said we had 3 million people living here and i think it's more like 800 thousand). when half-way through the film we learn that 26 million people have died it is a pretty mind-boggling figure, for me anyway.
there is a tradition of this sort of apocalyptic film, of course, but what it instantly reminds me of is albert camus' novel the plague -- one of my faves, of course -- which is told from the perspective of an algerian doctor who lives in a city where an epidemic is caused by diseased rats. the novel serves as a metaphor for war, as well, and i read it in 2005 or '06 when we were fully at war with iraq. i had also been reading a three-part series on global warming in the new yorker during that time. needless to say, the novel scared the shit out of me and seemed even more relevant probably than when it was written in 1947.
i would recommend 'contagion' -- it's really good for this sort of timely genre fare. you might not wake up thinking about end-times in the middle of the night, but the film certainly does a good job illustrating the way fear spreads, anyway.
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