By Quentin Calhoun

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

In light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the nine-year-old Steven Soderbergh film Contagion recently hit iTunes’s top 10 rented movies, eclipsing recent blockbusters like Star Wars: Episode IX and Frozen II. 

Contagion is the story of the spread of the fictional novel MEV-1 virus. In comparison to the virus that causes COVID-19, the MEV-1 virus is far deadlier and contagious. According to Soderbergh, the film was inspired by the 2002 SARS-CoV-1 outbreak and the 2009 flu pandemic. He consulted extensively with epidemiologists, such as W. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, throughout the process of making the film. Lipkin helped design the virus and possible public health response in the film. He even went so far as to coach many of the actors on set who displayed symptoms of the infection, i.e., seizures, deliriousness, and a heavy cough. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and current member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, described the film as “among the best—if not the best” movie about an outbreak from a scientific point of view when he viewed an early screening of the film in 2011. Fauci especially praised the film’s dismissal of bioterrorism, as suggested by some characters in the film to be the source of the MEV-1 virus, saying, “Nature’s the greatest bioterrorist.” 

Contagion is a thorough and well-researched but often emotionally cold tale of a pandemic told through the efforts and struggles of a long list of characters and divergent plotlines. While each character’s journey is distinct and fascinating in its own way, each seems to be a stand-in for the real-world actors. A large ensemble of actors portrays the medical experts racing to sequence the genome of the virus, trace its origin, find a vaccine, prepare temporary hospitals, and discredit an opportunist who peddles conspiracy theories to profit off of the crisis by promoting a cure with no scientific evidence to back it up. 

Meanwhile, Matt Damon’s character Mitch Emhoff, an immune everyman and father, seems to represent the rest of us: as an observer of a crisis we have little to no control over. 

Still, the fictional MEV-1 virus seems to assume the role of the main character. It informs the motivations of the characters, and much like doctors in the film, we spend the movie getting to know the virus more than anyone affected by it. Even in individual shots, the camera purposefully tracks the movement of the virus: an infected hand opening a door, a credit card being handed off to a bartender, a communal peanut bowl at a bar, etc. 

Many of the characters only appear for short periods and leave little lasting impression. The movie succeeds by impressing the audience with a global sense of the devastation caused by the virus, even if at the cost of developing emotional connections to particular characters.

With such divergent characters and plots, the emotional tone of the film varies wildly. In an early scene, an emotional Emhoff witnesses the death of his wife and patient zero, Beth (Gwenyth Paltrow), only for a pair of doctors to coldly perform an autopsy of her corpse on-screen minutes later.

As a movie, the film often lacks a consistent pace, but it is unfair to judge Contagion as a traditional film. It doesn’t have a message or argument to present, and it doesn’t adhere to conventional storytelling. It is meant to show the complicated timeline and spread of a realistic virus, how we would respond to it, and perhaps entertain along the way. It succeeds. 

According to Christopher Orr’s review of the film in 2011 in The Atlantic, “Contagion is ultimately beyond good or bad, beyond criticism. It just is.” 

Contagion is a brilliantly made movie; still, it’s impossible to enjoy the film without thinking of the current crisis. I had seen the film once, years ago, and remembered enjoying it. Today, it seems prophetic and all too familiar. 

Talk of presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission, social distancing, states quarantining themselves from one another, hoarding, and waiting months for a vaccine during the film will immediately pull you away from the film and towards depressing current events. That’s the highest praise I can give to its accuracy. 

I would recommend Contagion to anyone, but if you watch it during your endless hours of quarantine, be warned: you will find no comfort in a film that intelligently illustrates the threat posed by a pandemic, during one.