CONTAGION

It’s fascinating of course to watch this 2011 Stephen Soderbergh film about a global pandemic to see how presient it was.

For starters the fictional virus originates in a Chinese market where live animals are sold.

And the film gets a lot of technical detail right apparently, and even references R0 at one point.

On the other hand instead of lock downs it imagines whole cities being isolated, leading to breakdowns in law and order.

And the speed with which a vaccine is created and the way it is proved safe in this film are not credible but that's understandable given that the reality of how a vaccine is developed and tested is not that riveting. 

Which brings us to the main issue here, which is that a pandemic is not in itself necessarily good drama.

This film tries to solve this problem by focusing on half a dozen or so individuals, and so how much you enjoy this film hinges on how satisfying their stories are.

The one I was most into was that of Kate Winslett who goes to Minneapolis to try to slow down the spread of the virus.  Unfortunately she catches the virus early on and dies.

Minneapolis is where the first US deaths happen, that of Gwnwyth Paltrow and her young son, she having just returned from a business trip to Hong Kong.  After her death, as if that wasn't bad enough, her husband (stoic Matt Damon) then learns that on her way home she slept with an ex during a Chicago layover (bringing a new meaning to the term).  We are then obliged to check in with Matt periodically to see how he's coping (do we have to?).

There's also Lawrence Fishbourne as the head of the CDC who ends up getting into trouble for giving his girlfriend preferential treatment.

And there's a WHO epidemiologist in China trying to work out how the virus got transmitted to Paltrow, before rather bizarrely getting kidnapped. 

I didn't find any of this especially gripping but thankfully Jude Law livens things up as a thoroughly unpleasant blogger who sees an opportunity to make money from the hysteria whilst also promoting conspiracy theories.

Overall, whilst it's all well directed and acted, I found the whole thing curiously uninvolving - it just never seems to build up any dramatic  momentum.  Maybe when you've lived through the real thing any fictional depiction is bound to seem a bit tame?