(4/5)

With no prologue, no set-up, we’re thrust into Day Two. Gwyneth Paltrow is visibly fighting a bug; she’s shaky, she’s sniffly, she’s sweating and shivering at the same time. Not how you want to feel while traveling through a busy airport, but this is more than just a personal discomfort. The next few moments track, via a frenetically-scored montage, the movements of every person she’s come into contact with in the past few hours, and all the things they touch. A martini glass left on a bar, a tiny bathroom shared by dozens of airline passengers, a touch of a hand using a railing to swing out of a bus – these innocuous commonplaces all become harbingers of death, each touch hitting us viscerally.

From there, the film spreads out like the virus, pulling in the CDC and the World Health Organization to investigate this Minnesota woman’s quick demise and the already world-wide spread of the disease through Hong Kong, London, China, Chicago, and more. Every angle gets its moment (and sometimes it seems like little more than a moment), from Matt Damon’s grieving husband and frightened father to Laurence Fishburne’s seasoned CDC coordinator to Kate Winslet’s professional but deeply sympathetic field agent to Marion Cotillard’s WHO investigator to Jude Law’s conspiracy theorist blogger to Gwyneth Paltrow’s unsuspecting viral carrier to Jennifer Ehle’s brilliant scientist, and more. If these sound like types, that’s because they are. The film has so many stories it wants to tell that each one is perhaps understandably underdeveloped, relying on familiar types and star power to give them power.

And yet power they retain, because Soderbergh knows how to use his stars, and understands something that classical Hollywood knew all too well – if you need immediate audience identification with a character who has very little screen time, you better have a recognizable and charismatic star in the role. The film moves quickly in between the interlocking story lines, with a detached yet hectic perspective, capturing not so much these individuals, but the story of the virus itself. For MEV-1 is the main character here, its origin and spread the central driving force of the narrative. This is the healthcare version of Traffic, the real-life version of what happened during the 28 days of 28 Days Later. It’s a thriller that could so easily happen that everybody in the theatre attempted to stifle any coughs and avoided touching the railings on the way out.

It is not a great character piece, and indeed, a few of the story lines are tenuous at best – Marion Cotillard’s in particular ties in very little with the rest of the film, seeming only to provide an “oh, and this was happening too” supplemental anecdote. But Cotillard is so easy to watch that it’s hard to complain too loudly. And while Jude Law’s anti-establishment blogger story has some salient points (and the already widely-embraced “blogging is graffiti” line), it’s too unfocused and out of step with the rest of the piece to have the kind of strength it should. But Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns are writing large here, and as a microcosm of a global epidemic writ large, Contagion works quite well.

Meanwhile, Soderbergh’s eye for detail balances the broad scope of the narrative, giving us many moments to hold on to in the chaos. The aforementioned everyday interactions that become ominous. Winslet attempting to give her blanket to a neighbor in the final, painful throes of the disease. Damon making his way through a riotscape that almost belies the 28-day timeline. Cotillard realizing where her loyalties lie. Fishburne confronted by John Hawkes. Ehle smiling at the monkey who survives. Ehle is the surprise star here, actually – known mostly for her role as Elizabeth Bennett in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, she gives a sneakily good performance, often taking the spotlight away from her better-known costars. The other star, holding the disparate film together, is Cliff Martinez’s score. More urgent and insistent than his ultra-cool score for Drive, the score here makes sure that the pacing never drags.

Contagion is far more likely to stay in the mind as a speculative “what if” scenario rather than as a self-contained piece of art (or entertainment), and even while watching it I was engaged more by the intricacy and real-life possibilities of the developing plot rather than by any character or emotion – which tends to lead to more admiration than love. But as a baldly laid-out thriller, it’s more than solid. Warning: side effects may include an increase of hypochondria.

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay: Scott Z. Burns
Producers: Steven Soderbergh, Gregory Jacobs, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher
Starring: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Jennifer Ehle, Elliot Gould, Bryan Cranston, John Hawkes, Demetri Martin, Enrico Colantoni
Runtime: 106 min.
MPAA: PG-13