When I started this blog, I had decided that
I would not do movie reviews here. Don’t ask me why but that’s one of the
things I had told myself. But after I watched this movie, I just had to write
about it.
Contagion was probably the only movie, which was not only
entertaining but appealed to my brain too. It was one sci-fi thriller I could
actually watch without cringing once at the “science” involved. This movie was
also special to me because it is probably close to the kind of work that I do.
Ok that is not exactly what I do, but it comes quite close.
Here's my take on the movie. Be warned, there are spoilers ahead.
Contagion has a star-studded cast: Matt Damon, Gwyneth
Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne to name a few. But the
highlight of the movie is definitely not the cast.
The movie is about a deadly pandemic and how the CDC along
with other international research organisations and public health workers
combat the challenges that come along with a pandemic of such magnitude.
It was a very well thought out movie covering all aspects of
a pandemic and very close attention was paid to all the minute details. I read
about how Prof. Lipkin and his team built a 3-D model of the said virus and
then worked out how it would spread and evolve and how vaccines would be
developed. They actually worked with scientists to plan the movie, no wonder
they got the science right.
The mass
hysteria, which is brought about by various situations during a pandemic and
the collective behavior of people is well depicted in the movie. The
helplessness, the ignorance, the panic and the outrage of the masses due to
lack of communication from the higher ups and the loss of social order due to
that is definitely something to worry about during a pandemic.
I was also impressed by the accuracy of scientific protocol
in the movie. The protocols followed, the steps needed to identify patient
zero, the difficulty and the timelines to generate a new vaccine and the
characterization of a novel virus are all dealt with precision. It was so
different from the general “Oh, I’ll have DNA evidence in a jiffy” kind of
depiction mostly made in sci-fi thrillers.
I thought it was nice how scientists were projected as
people with lives outside of the laboratory. The nature of researchers and
their obsession with their own research is well depicted. Dr. Sussman, in the
movie continues to experiment on a cell line in spite of being given orders to
destroy his samples but he is the one who comes up with a way to grow the
virus. Also, Dr. Hextall tests the vaccine that she comes up with on herself
first, violating several protocols. Yeah, scientists love to break the rules.
Jude Law-very annoying: both the actor and the character he
played. He played the guy that scientists love to hate. The amateur blogger
making false claims about a homeopathic cure and spreading rumours about quack
medicine. I would agree that there was some truth in what he said about pharmaceutical companies and their mission to make money. There was an amusing line in the movie when someone said to Jude Law-
“a blog is nothing but grafitti with punctuation marks” LOL!
The movie kept the audience at the edge of their seats all
through. It gave the audience a scare of what might come in the future. In fact
after the movie ended, nobody dared to cough or sneeze. Even if someone did, it was not
without getting stares from people around.
The movie ended with identifying how the virus infected the
first human being (patient zero). A bat initially harbours the virus. The bat
then drops a half-eaten banana in a hoghouse where it is eaten by a pig. The
pig is then slaughtered and is being prepared by a chef in a casino in Macau.
This is where patient zero shakes hands with the chef who has not washed his
hands and she gets sick with the virus.
The lady sitting next to me in the
theatre exclaimed, “Oh, it was the pig, who was responsible”.
“No”, I wanted to tell her, “It was the chef who didn’t wash
his hands.”
