Contagion 2011

When Contagion came out back in 2011, I thought it was a horrible idea for a movie. It had only been a few years since Swine Flu was a thing we all worried about. There had been scattered reports of outbreaks of Mad Cow Disease for years. And my mom had recently been ill with something we were originally told was, and I quote, "A virus infection thst jumps between her brain and her stomach."

Brief aside.

The naturopath who "diagnosed" my mother with this odd, nameless viral infection did so because in her twisted, self-righteous mind that was the only explanation for my mother's symptoms of vomiting and double-vision. After a series of spinal taps and a surgical biopsy, it was later revealed that my mom had an aggressive form of non-hodgkin's lymphoma in her brain. One tumor was pressing on her optic nerves and messed with her vision, and another was lodge in the corpus callosum in her brain and pressed in just the right places to cause her sporadic vomiting.

The naturopath had insisted that whatever this was couldn't be cancer because she (the naturopath) had supposedly cured herself of cancer, and therefore considered herself a cancer expert. Once it was revealed that the naturopath was wrong and that my mom did actually have cancer, the naturopath vanished from our lives and we haven't heard from her since. She didn't even bother to come to my mom's funeral.

The caveats to my story is that I don't blame naturopathy for what happened to my mom.  I still believe in the effectiveness of homeopathy and natural medicines. I do, however, blame that particular naturopath for her arrogance. She believed that she knew better than other "regular" doctors even after three cancer patients and our family cat died under her care within a year of each other. If my mom hadn't been so convinced by this woman's claims, she might have gotten an accurate diagnosis sooner, but as it is we will never know.

The point of my little, personal aside is not only to set context for when this movie came out, but also to show that I come from both sides of the medical debate. I believe in the effectiveness of both traditional and natural medicines.

Well, anyway, my mom's been in the ground only a few months, and this movie Contagion turns up in theatres. And I remember thinking, "I'm never going to watch that! It's too scary! It's just going to make me paranoid about everything."

Flash forward eight years, I have now watched Contagion twice through. Maybe this sudden fascination with medical procedures and outbreaks prevention was inadvertently caused by my stepmom's successful lung transplant. Or maybe it's something else. I don't know.

And what I discovered is the movie really isn't that scary. It gets you thinking. We've had several people at the hotel where I work exhibit flu symptoms, and just something as simple as that can make you think twice about how often you wash your hands after touching a door nob or even your cell phone. Recently, I had to seriously consider whether or not to cancel a plane trip to Seattle due to a cold. On the one hand I felt fine other than my cough and runny nose, but on the other I'm piling into an enclosed metal tube with 50-100 other people. They'll have three hours continuous exposure to my germs just because I'm breathing the same circulated air they are. Add to that that my own immune system is already compromised, which makes me more susceptible to pick up whatever little bacteria and viruses those other people might be carrying.

I am happy to report that my symptoms were significantly gone by the time my plane took off, and I had a great time in Seattle, and nobody else became sick or died because of me.

The same cannot be said for Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Beth Emhoff in Contagion. She has just returned from a business trip (which involved a visit to a casino) in Hong Kong. On the way back, she takes advantage of a ling layover in Chicago to have a quick fling with an old flame.

None of which would have been discovered if it hadn't been for that gnarly little virus she brought back with her.

At first, it exhibits as standard flu symptoms; cough, throat pain, fever, headache. Nothing to worry about, right? Just take an antibiotic and some vitamin C, rest, drink tea. Badda boom, badda bang. Right?

Until Beth has a seizure and later dies in the hospital, closely followed by her young son who had started exhibiting symptoms the previous day.

Nobody suspects anything...until the doctors preforming the autopsy open up Beth's head and take a look at her brain. We never get to see what it looks like, but one doctor tells the other to step away from the table and call everyone.

Oh, and remember that guy Beth hsd the affair with during her layover in Chicago? He gets sick and dies, too. Same symptoms.

Add to this that a handful of other seemingly random people around the world suddenly develop the same symptoms.

All of them were in the casino in Hong Kong that night Beth was there.

And, as you can imagine from a movie about a deadly virus outbreak, mass hysteria eventually erupts. It's all of our worst fears. Shots of bodies being carted off to mass graves are reminiscent of the plague pits of the Black Death outbreaks in Europe.

The movie is unique in the it doesn't follow standard Hollywood movie structures. Tbe movie is about a few individuals and how they react and work to combat (or simply survive) the mysterious outbreak. There are no dramatic chase scenes. No political conspiracies. No Robin Hoods spewing anti-christian, left-wing propaganda. Just a handful of honest, hardworking people trying to get to the bottom of this thing.

And, arguably, this is one of those movies where a bunch of big names appear for about ten minutes, and that's it. Gwyneth Paltrow is patient zero, so she dies early, early on. Kate Winslet develops the virus and dies a few scenes later. Bryan Cranston makes a few appearances. Marion Cotillard gets kidnapped by desperate survivors 20-30 minutes in and we don't see her again until near the end when she's ransomed for a supply of the vaccine.

Spoiler alert: they eventually find a vaccine for this thing. It takes them the better part of an hour and a half and over 25 million people dead worldwide to do it, but they do.

The movie follows a few different people as they navigate the delicate terrain of this mysterious epidemic.

We follow Mitch (Matt Damon) and his daughter Jory, just some ordinary people trying not to get sick and survive when their hometown of Minneapolis is declared a quarantine zone. Well, Mitch is immune. We know this because his wife was Beth Emhoff, aka patient zero, so he's already been exposed and didn't get sick. He spends most of the movie trying to keep his only surviving daughter Jory from getting the virus that killed her mother and little brother at the beginning of the movie.

We also follow a team of dedicated researchers at the CDC who fight valiantly to figure out what this virus is and how to stop it.

We also follow a conspiracy nut/theorists (Jude Law) who is conducting his own research and suspects the CDC of hiding the truth about effective natural treatments in favor of creating a vaccine they can make millions off of.

The movie doesn't take sides. Instead it shows the epidemic from all of these different angles and how each of these people act.

For example, it is revealed that one CDC guy used his privileged position to get his girlfriend out of town between the quarantine. Later on, it is suggested that Jude Law, who has been running around claiming to have cured himself with a natural remedy, never had the virus and made his story up. Whether it was wrong for the CDC guy to get his girlfriend out of the danger zone or whether Jude Law was really faking his illness and recovery for his blog is never specified.  I appreciate the movie for staying open-minded like that, and for not just defaulting to calling Jude Law a nut or exposing deep, nefarious corruption and a diabolical conspiracy on the part of the CDC guy. Both are people who want to help find a cure for this virus as soon as possible, and they take extremely different avenues to accomplish this goal. Both have good intentions, but both are flawed.

Contagion feels very episodic, seamlessly jumping from one stage to another, demonstrating how different people react to the same emergency. It feels more like a biopic about an Ebola epidemic than a Hollywood movie with a laundry list of A-List actors. But it is a very well made fake biopic, and one which I highly recommend. In terms of its filmmaking, it's a refreshing change to the standard Hollywood format.

Even if it does make you think twice about touching your face and washing your hands.