Contagion (2011 film)
Contagion is a 2011 American medical disaster thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh. Its ensemble cast includes Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Elliott Gould, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, Jennifer Ehle, Sanaa Lathan, and Gwyneth Paltrow. The plot concerns the spread of a highly contagious virus transmitted by respiratory droplets and fomites, attempts by medical researchers and public health officials to identify and contain the disease, the loss of social order as the virus turns into a worldwide pandemic, and the introduction of a vaccine to halt its spread. To follow several interacting plot lines, the film makes use of the multi-narrative "hyperlink cinema" style, popularized in several of Soderbergh's films. The film was inspired by real-life outbreaks such as the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak and the 2009 flu pandemic.[2]
Contagion
- Participant Media
- Imagenation Abu Dhabi
- Double Feature Films
- September 3, 2011 (Venice)
- September 9, 2011 (United States)
106 minutes
United States
English
$60 million
$136.5 million[1]
Following their collaboration on The Informant! (2009), Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns discussed a film depicting the rapid spread of a virus. Burns consulted with representatives of the World Health Organization as well as medical experts such as W. Ian Lipkin and Larry Brilliant. Principal photography started in Hong Kong in September 2010, and continued in Chicago, Atlanta, London, Dublin, Geneva, and San Francisco Bay Area until February 2011.
Contagion premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival on September 3, 2011, and was theatrically released on September 9, 2011. Commercially, the film made $136.5 million against its $60 million production budget. Critics praised it for its narrative and the performances, as did scientists for its accuracy. The film received renewed popularity in 2020 due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.[3][4]
Plot[edit]
Returning from a Hong Kong business trip, PR executive Beth Emhoff has a tryst with a former lover during a Chicago layover. She feels slightly ill, which she attributes to jet lag. Two days later, back home in suburban Minneapolis, Beth's husband, Mitch, rushes her to the hospital when she suffers a seizure; she painfully dies from an unknown illness. Returning home, Mitch finds that his 6-year-old stepson, Clark, has also died. Mitch is isolated but found to be naturally immune. After being released, he protectively keeps his teenage daughter, Jory, quarantined at home.
In Atlanta, Department of Homeland Security representatives meet with Dr. Ellis Cheever of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) over concerns that the disease may be a bioweapon. Cheever dispatches Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, to Minneapolis, where she traces everyone having had contact with Beth. She negotiates with reluctant local bureaucrats to commit resources for a public health response. Soon after, Mears becomes infected and dies. As the novel virus spreads, several cities are placed under quarantine, causing panic buying, widespread looting, and violence.
At the CDC, Dr. Ally Hextall determines the virus is a combination of genetic material from pig and bat-borne viruses. Scientists are unable to discover a cell culture to grow the newly identified MEV-1 (Meningoencephalitis Virus 1). Cheever determines the virus too virulent to be researched at multiple labs and restricts all work to one government site. Hextall orders UCSF researcher Dr. Ian Sussman to destroy his samples. Believing he is close to finding a viable cell culture, Sussman violates the order and identifies a usable cell culture from which Hextall develops a vaccine. Scientists determine the virus is spread by respiratory droplets and fomites, with an R0 of four when the virus mutates; they project that 1 in 12 people on the planet will be infected, with a 25–30% mortality rate.
Conspiracy theorist Alan Krumwiede blogs about the virus. He claims to have cured himself of the virus using a homeopathic cure derived from forsythia. People seeking forsythia violently overwhelm pharmacies. Krumwiede, having faked being infected to boost sales of forsythia, is arrested for conspiracy and securities fraud.
Hextall inoculates herself with the experimental vaccine and then visits her infected father. She does not contract MEV-1, and the vaccine has been declared successful. The CDC awards vaccinations by lottery based on birthdates. By this time, the pandemic's death toll has reached 2.5 million in the U.S. and 26 million worldwide.
Earlier in Hong Kong, WHO epidemiologist Dr. Leonora Orantes and public health officials comb through security videotapes of Beth's contacts in a Macau casino and identify her as the index case. Government official, Sun Feng kidnaps Orantes as leverage to obtain a vaccine for his village, holding her for months. WHO officials provide the village with the earliest vaccines, and she is released. When she learns the vaccines were placebos, she goes to warn the village. Mitch stages a home "prom" for Jory after her boyfriend Andrew receives the vaccine, as life begins to return to normal.
In a flashback to the spillover event, a bulldozer from Emhoff's company clears rainforest in China, disturbing bats. One bat finds shelter in a pig farm and drops an infected piece of banana that a pig then consumes. The pig is then slaughtered and prepared by a chef in a Macau casino, who, without washing his hands, transmits the virus to Beth via a handshake.
Additionally, the film also stars John Hawkes as Roger, CDC custodian and acquaintance of Dr. Cheever; Anna Jacoby-Heron as Jory Emhoff, daughter of Mitch Emhoff; Josie Ho as the sister of Li Fai, who was the first to be infected with MEV-1 in Hong Kong; Sanaa Lathan as Aubrey Cheever, fiancée of Dr. Cheever; Demetri Martin as Dr. David Eisenberg, CDC colleague of Dr. Hextall; Armin Rohde as Damian Leopold, a WHO official; Enrico Colantoni as Dennis French, a Department of Homeland Security official; Larry Clarke as Dave, a Minnesota health official working with Dr. Mears; and Monique Gabriela Curnen as Lorraine Vasquez, a print journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Release[edit]
Home media[edit]
Contagion was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America on January 3, 2012,[41] and in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2012.[42] In its first week of release, the film topped the DVD chart with 411,000 units sold for $6.16 million.[43] That same week it sold 274,000 Blu-ray copies for $4.93 million, topping that chart as well.[44] DVD sales dropped during the second week of release, with 193,000 units sold for $2.89 million.[45] As of early July 2012, Contagion had sold 802,535 copies in DVD, for $12.01 million in revenue.[41]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Various American commercial analysts anticipated that the film would have ticket sales of between $20–$25 million during its opening weekend,[39][40] which it did, grossing $8 million on its first day,[46] and $23.1 million for the entire weekend.[47] Of that total, ten percent ($2.3 million) of the gross came from IMAX screenings.[48] By outgrossing competitor The Help ($8.7M), Contagion became the highest-grossing film of the week.[47] Demographically, the opening audience was evenly divided among gender, according to Warner Bros., while eighty percent of spectators were of the age of 25 and over.[47][49] Contagion did well the following weekend, generating a $14.5 million box office, but came in second to the re-release of The Lion King (1994).[50] The third week saw the box office drop by forty percent, for a total gross of $8.7 million.[51] By the fourth week, Contagion had dropped to ninth place at the box office with $5 million, and the number of theaters narrowed to 2,744.[52] The film completed its theatrical run on December 15, 2011, at which point its total domestic gross was $75.6 million.[1]
Contagion made its international debut in six foreign markets the same weekend as its American release, including Italy, where it achieved $663,000 from 309 theaters.[53] The first week saw Contagion gross $2.1 million from 553 establishments—a per-theater average of $3,797.[53] Foreign grosses for Contagion would remain relatively stagnant up until the weekend of October 14–16, 2011, when the film expanded into several additional European markets.[54] Out of the $3.9 million that was generated from 1,100 venues during that weekend, nearly 40% of the gross originated from Spain, where the film earned $1.5 million from 325 theaters.[54] With the growing expansion of the film in seven additional markets, the weekend of October 21–23, 2011 saw Contagion take in $9.8 million from 2,505 locations, increasing the international gross to $22.9 million.[55] In the United Kingdom, one of the film's significant international releases, Contagion opened in third place at the box office with $2.3 million from 398 theaters;[55] it subsequently garnered the highest debut gross of a Soderbergh film since Ocean's Thirteen (2007).[56] International grosses for Contagion totaled $60.8 million.[1]
Critical response[edit]
Contagion has received positive reviews by film commentators. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 85% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 278 reviews, with an average rating of 7.10/10. The website's critics consensus states, "Tense, tightly plotted, and bolstered by a stellar cast, Contagion is an exceptionally smart – and scary – disaster movie."[57] On Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 based on the critiques from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 70 based on 38 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[58] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[59]
The Guardian journalist Peter Bradshaw felt that Contagion blended well together as a film, although opined that Soderbergh was somewhat unsuccessful in channeling the fears, frights, and "the massive sense of loss" of "ordinary people".[60] To David Denby of The New Yorker, the "brilliant" film was "serious, precise, frightening," and "emotionally enveloping".[26] Despite applauding Soderbergh for "hopscotching" tidily "between the intimate and international", The Atlantic's Christopher Orr was disappointed with the film's detached and "clinical" disposition, which led him to conclude that Contagion should have gone with a more inflexible rationale, or a lesson "beyond 'wash your hands often and hope you're lucky'."[61] "For all the craft that went into it, Contagion is ultimately beyond good or bad, beyond criticism. It just is," professed The Atlantic writer.[61] Describing it as a "smart" and "spooky" installment, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Soderbergh doesn't milk your tears as things fall apart, but a passion that can feel like cold rage is inscribed in his images of men and women isolated in the frame, in the blurred point of view of the dying and in the insistent stillness of a visual style that seems like an exhortation to look."[34] Regarding the story, Salon columnist Andrew O'Hehir avouched that the "crisp" and succinct narrative matched up to the "beautifully composed" visuals of the film.[29] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter proclaimed that Soderbergh and Burns effectively created anxiety in the "shrewd" and "unsensationalistic" film without becoming exaggerated,[62] a sentiment echoed by Jeannette Catsoulis of NPR, who insisted that the duo "weave multiple characters into a narrative that's complex without being confusing, and intelligent without being baffling".[37] Writing for The Village Voice, Karina Longworth thought that Contagion reflected the "self-consciousness" and "experimentation" of some of Soderbergh's previous efforts, such as the Ocean's trilogy and The Girlfriend Experience (2009).[31]
The performances of multiple cast members were frequently mentioned in the reviews. The Boston Globe journalist Wesley Morris praised not only Ehle's performance, but the work of the "undercard" such as Cranston, Gould, and Colantoni, among others.[35] Similarly, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Ehle the "best in show".[63] As Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan summed up, "Two-time Tony-winning actress Jennifer Ehle comes close to stealing the picture with this quietly yet quirkily empathetic performance."[64] With regard to Law, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Steven Rea stated that the actor portrayed the character with a "nutty" confidence;[65] Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle agreed with Rea's thoughts.[66][67] Damon provided the film's "relatable heart", according to Forrest Wickman of Slate, who concluded that even with her controlled performance, Winslet "lives up to her head-of-the-class reputation even in an unusually small role".[32]
The character development of multiple characters produced varying response from critics. Contrary to Mitch's stance as the main protagonist, Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post felt that Contagion "treats him with an oddly clinical detachment".[68] In particular Law's character, Alan Krumwiede, attracted commentary from Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who wrote, "The blogger subplot doesn't interact clearly with the main story lines and functions mostly as an alarming but vague distraction."[69]
Scientific response[edit]
Ferris Jabr of New Scientist approved of Contagion for accurately portraying the "successes and frustrations" of science. Jabr cites story elements such as "the fact that before researchers can study a virus, they need to figure out how to grow it in cell cultures in the lab, without the virus destroying all the cells" as examples of accurate depictions of science.[70] Carl Zimmer, a science writer, praised the film, stating, "It shows how reconstructing the course of an outbreak can provide crucial clues, such as how many people an infected person can give a virus to, how many of them get sick, and how many of them die." He also describes a conversation with the film's scientific consultant, W. Ian Lipkin, in which Lipkin defended the rapid generation of a vaccine in the film. Zimmer wrote that "Lipkin and his colleagues are now capable of figuring out how to trigger immune reactions to exotic viruses from animals in a matter of weeks, not months. And once they've created a vaccine, they don't have to use Eisenhower-era technology to manufacture it in bulk."[71] Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccination expert, stated that "typically when movies take on science, they tend to sacrifice the science in favor of drama. That wasn't true here." Offit appreciated the film's usage of concepts such as R0 and fomites, as well as the fictional strain's origins, which was based on the Nipah virus.[72]
Legacy[edit]
The film received renewed popularity in 2020 due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.[3] By March 2020, Contagion was the seventh-most-popular film on iTunes, listed as the number two catalog title on Warner Bros. compared to its number 270 rank the past December 2019,[73] and had average daily visits on piracy websites increase by 5,609 percent in January 2020 compared to the previous month.[74] HBO Now also reported that Contagion had been the most viewed film for two weeks straight.[75]
As the film continued to regain popularity, the cast reunited through an infomercial type public service announcement in partnership with the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in March 2020.[76] Regarding its resurgence in 2020, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns responded in an interview with The Washington Post saying, "It is sad, and it is frustrating. Sad because so many people are dying and getting sick. Frustrating because people still don't seem to grasp the situation we are now in and how it could have been avoided by properly funding the science around all of this. It is also surreal to me that people from all over the world write to me asking how I knew it would involve a bat or how I knew the term "social distancing". I didn't have a crystal ball — I had access to great expertise. So, if people find the movie to be accurate, it should give them confidence in the public health experts who are out there right now trying to guide us."[77]
In February 2021, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed that watching the scramble for vaccines in Contagion inspired him to order a much larger quantity of COVID-19 vaccines for the United Kingdom than his advisers recommended, accelerating the UK's eventual rollout of its vaccination programme ahead of other European countries.[78][79]
In December 2020, Soderbergh announced that a "philosophical sequel" for the film was in the works.[80]