Contagion

Contagion is high-quality filmmaking craftsmanship in the typical Steven Soderbergh fashion, with the intelligent idea of a global catastrophe and how to deal with it, topped off with attractive characters. Rather than “ordinary people”, the film focuses on characters who are in a position to deal with this problem directly and who, through their vulnerability, are also shown as ordinary human beings. The “chemical” atmosphere is emphasized by progressive electronic music without a single emotion. There could be more powerful moments and the best parts should not have happened at the beginning. The explanatory ending is sloppy. Overall, Contagion is a decent alternative to disaster movies as we know them from Emmerich and such :-) (13/10/2011)

Steven Soderbergh’s variation on Hollywood disaster films is conceived as the exact antithesis of all of the attributes of the classic form of this genre established by A-level studio spectacles in the 1950s and definitively codified in the 1970s. At the same time, however, the aim of the film is not to subvert the genre, but rather to come up with a form of the genre for the era of extensive availability of information, so that it can again function effectively and arouse horror and tension in the audience, as compared to Emmerich-style popcorn tripe. The necessary foundation for this is provided by Scott Z. Burns’s masterful, intelligently constructed and information-packed screenplay, which is based on scientific knowledge and experience from the epidemics of that time (and therefore greatly corresponds to the real pandemic of 2020, unlike the naïve, fantastical scenario of, for example, Outbreak). (16/05/2020)

A sterile clinical procedure that goes against the greatest genre conventions and its brilliantly organized yet pedantic narrative proves that Soderbergh is equal to Fincher in this regard. Unfortunately, there are a few pointless scenes and schemes, but with some passages of resolution and distrust, Contagion is close to its maximum. It shows better than any other disaster film that fear is the worst contagion. (14/10/2011)

Watching this with flu is only for the hard-nosed. The main protagonist is the contagion itself, that’s what it’s all about. An entirely new kind of movie, an emotionally sterile (and all the more impressive because of it) documentary about future things, which creates, through it’s infectious atmosphere, the insistent feeling of “so this is how it’s going to be, this is what’s gonna happen..." Of course, when it breaks out, it will be without Martinez’s perfect soundtrack. Which will be a crying shame. (03/01/2013)

Soderbergh doesn’t give a shit about the audience. Zero emotions, little tension, full of stars but without any of them shining too much on screen. Contagion is simply an unbiased and detached look at a global pandemic, and it’s actually that austerity and inhumanity what brings to the surface the horror and hopelessness of the situation. It probably only needed to dig a bit deeper into the issue, the last half hour felt too short. 7/10 (16/12/2011)