Because any writing vaguely resembling a movie review needs some sort of pseudo-wit based around a pun. I saw Contagion over the weekend. It’s not often I make it to the theater for a movie (last time was Midnight in Paris, before that I think it was Black Swan), so I try to do my due diligence and make sure it’s going to be good before I hand over my limited entertainment dollars. Contagion didn’t disappoint, for a number a spoilerific reasons that follow.
There were moments of “Oh my goodness SCIENCE WORDS,” but overall I appreciated how much of the real life crap was in the movie. The sole immune guy wasn’t some valuable hero, he just got lucky and had to keep living through the chaos like everyone else and hoping his remaining child wouldn’t get sick as well. The guy running the CDC had to continue doing his job in the cast shadow of a looming Congressional investigation after it was all over. Homeopathic forsythia wasn’t some kind of miracle cure for the disease; rather it was scientists continuing to work who were able to create a vaccination.
Of course, the one doctor took a huge risk testing it on herself after only one day. With the way things were going I was expecting her to return to the lab only to discover that the monkey had died after the second day. Lucky girl.
It’s interesting how people get upset about some individuals getting preferred treatment, another issue raised by the film. In a crisis, there really are some people who, by the nature of their skills and jobs, are more valuable than other people. That’s the reality of the situation—if whatever it is going to be contained, you want those people around. In this situation, the doctors and scientists were most valuable. In a different crisis, say, being invaded by an army, you may need people with a different set of skills. I think you can even successfully argue that the immediate families of those most valuable people are also higher priority, because if they are dealing with sickness and death among their loved ones they are going to be unable to perform their jobs at a level that will make them useful to the population at large.
After you’ve got your core group of leaders and valuable personnel taken care of, it makes sense to be as equitable as possible to everybody else. The lottery system for distributing the limited quantities of the vaccine made sense to me.
It’s also interesting that there was such a negative portrayal of bloggers. There are certainly a lot of conspiracy theorists out there, but usually they aren’t the ones getting major followings and earning money for it (unless maybe you count the Tea Party). There is a lot of corruption in government, but it’s more along the lines of regulators and representatives being in bed with the corporations they are supposed to be controlling, rather than purposefully engineering global epidemics.
There’s a lot of problems caused by blatant greed that don’t need any further story to explain—not a carefully executed plan but corporations attempting to get away with whatever they can to make more money in the short term and those who are supposed to protect us essentially working for them instead.
I enjoy movies that give me something to think about afterward, which this one did. It also went against a lot of the typical action movie epidemic tropes. Go see it if you get the chance.