film review

"Contagion" and Zombies

Warning: spoilers below for the film Contagion


For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

Richard Dawkins

Halloween is around the corner and it’s appropriate that these days, zombies are on the rise given that vampires are now about sex or sparkles, rebooted 80s’ franchises are, well, franchises, and I can only assume that werewolves are passe given how The Wolfman bombed at the box office only a year and a half ago. How appropriate, too, that I recently watched Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, a film with a premise so similar to the core root of the zombie sub-horror genre that the degree of separation between one and the other is as thin as Heineken. 

For those unfamiliar with the September release, Contagion is about an pandemic of a new, deadly virus, a virus so deadly it ravages countries and blips the mortality statistics into the millions worldwide within a month of its premiere. As people drop dead and the virus mutates, societies breakdown into anarchy, barely contained by a veil (if not facade) of remaining authority still alive. Doctors and nurses walk out, refusing to treat patients since there is no cure and they don’t want to become infected themselves; researchers at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) rush to find a vaccine and cure, working tirelessly against a pathogen that has no precursor; rioters break into pharmacies, attempting to loot homeopathic treatments a conspiracy-driven blogger promotes; civilians are forced to protect their homes with arms, turning away friends for fear of transmission and living lives of relative isolation; survivors live in more dread than the dying, going about their daily routine with a mysophobic and self-preservation alertness; and and the bureaucracy of governments churns its wheels as it attempts to allocate resources and personnel to different scenes, each nation balancing the interest of its own people with that of the international community in the face of natural force capable of wiping out the human population. 

While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.

Philip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad, and Robert J. Smith, "When Zombies Attack!“ (2009)

Pause for a second a consider how similar the events which unfold in Contagion correlate with events with which we’ve come to expect in zombie stories: if anything, zombies are a perfect model for the pandemic of an infectious disease, plus the bonus of bludgeoning practice if you’re into that sort of spectacle. The key difference between zombies and a deadly disease is a minute one: infectious diseases can be transmitted a variety of ways – such as vectors like mosquitoes and rats, fomites like a staircase railing or martini class, or even direct contact like handshaking and kissing – and unless the pathogen itself is particularly hardy and has a long incubation period, it will likely die off once its host (aka the unfortunate patient) dies; zombies, on the other have two modes of action: 1) eat the living, or 2) leave a infectious mark after their prey manages to get away – the agent which causes the disease, interestingly, requires both direct contact (aka chomp) and the host to die before it can be properly transmitted. Besides this medical difference, pandemics and zombies both share the same consequences: social breakdown into levels of anarchy and inhumanity, and both are spread by contact, direct or indirect. 

The film suggests that, at any moment, our advanced civilization could be close to a breakdown exacerbated by precisely what is most advanced in it.

David Denby, Contagion review via The New Yorker

Yet what’s really scary in “Contagion” is how fast once-humming airports and offices, homes and cities empty out when push comes to shove comes to panic in the streets.

Mahnola Dargis, Contagion review via The New York Times

What makes Contagion compelling is its particularly realistic grasp in depicting the events unfold when a new, deadly virus hits the globe. The film is an ensemble film with six intertwined stories with three distinct POVs: the first, involving Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon) and his family, provides insight into the events unfolding amongst civilians; the second revolves around government authorities on the scene, and has three distinct plot lines – Dr. Ellis Cheever (Lawrence Fishburne) balancing his duties between the CDC and US homeland security, Dr. Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) who works tirelessly on a vaccine, and Dr. Leonara Orantes (Marion Cotillard), a WHO epidemiologist who visits Hong Kong and tries to determine the origin of the virus; and lastly the third, which revolves around Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) who blogs conspiracy theory-ridden polemics and vouches for alternative medicine. In total, there are six stories and three POVs which pervade Contagion. 

One aspect of the film is befuddling. Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) is a popular blogger with conspiracy theories about the government’s ties with drug companies. His concerns are ominous but unfocused. Does he think drug companies encourage viruses? The blogger subplot doesn’t interact clearly with the main story lines and functions mostly as an alarming but vague distraction.

Roger Ebert, Contagion review via the Chicago SunTimes

If there’s a serious misstep in Contagion, it’s that the subplot involving Alan is poorly focused. His motivation is murky. Initially, he appears to be a conspiracy theory nutcase. Then he’s a market manipulator being recruited by a hedge fund manager. Soderbergh wants him in the film to represent a slice of the population, but doesn’t seem to know how to manage him. There’s a sense that Alan should have been given either more or less screen time. The amount he’s actually accorded doesn’t seem just right.

James Berardinelli, Contagion review

Listen, I don’t object to the depiction of an Internet journalist as a scumbag; I object to reducing the entire discussion of the current dreadful state of media in this country to a lame joke, and one that suggests we’re better off not challenging authority. 

Andrew O'Hehir, Contagion review via Salon.com

Contagion could have been a much more haunting (and hence stronger) film had Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns placed a bigger emphasis on the decay of social order that results when the disease becomes pandemic – the same emphasis that makes certain zombie dramas like The Walking Dead so much more compelling than the average zombie flesh fest. Unfortunately, the Krumwiede story becomes an unnecessary crux in the film’s progression: while it’s likely that a good portion of the population would turn to unfounded internet declarations in times of desperation, I don’t think an entire story line needed to be dedicated to this aspect of a pandemic causing social deterioration. In fact, the Krumwiede story could have easily been incorporated into Cheever’s troubles in dealing with government bureaucracy and reaching out to the American population. I suspect, however, that Krumwiede’s story was included to give Contagion narrative momentum, and unfortunately I wholeheartedly believe this was the wrong choice. A wiser decision would have been to linger more on the deterioration of the dying, and to give more screen time to Emhoff and Hextall, whose respective story lines encompass the core components of Contagion’s horror: a man who is trying to keep his remaining family alive, and a women who is pressed by the constraints of time and technology to find a cure. 

"Contagion’s” implacable tone has its drawbacks. The movie is almost pathological in its avoidance of messy emotion.

Michael Phillips, Contagion review via the Chicago Tribune

If anything, the primary momentum of Contagion could have easily been Mitch Emhoff’s perspective: true terror lies not with the dying, but with the remaining who have yet to know of their own fates. The moments in Contagion where we see people looting, robbing, and clawing over one another for limited supplies are as poignant as they are when we see similar moments in zombie narratives: they encompass the deterioration of social order, when anarchy becomes as pandemic as the disease itself. Sure, you have those who retain their own sense of decency and humanity, but realistically (and unfortunately) such individuals tend to be far and few between in the wake of a potential human apocalypse. Mitch Emhoff is one of those few dignified people amidst the chaos, a character whose sense of common decency is undeterred in the wake of disaster; his story line is what really keeps the viewers on edge, for we can only imagine what would happen to him and his daughter if they were forced to fend for themselves against violence or worse yet, opportunists. 

Had Soderbergh and Burns considered the possibility that being scientifically accurate and narratively compelling were not mutually exclusive, I suspect Contagion would have been one of the few films to achieve the feat of depicting a researcher more nuanced than Hollywood cliches – I’m speaking, of course, of Dr. Hextall’s story. 

The pressure cooker plot calls for intense performances all around but first among equals are Winslet and Ehle. The former’s abilities are amply known but, whenever Ehle appears in films or onstage, she makes it clear she entirely belongs in the company of Streep (whom she resembles), Winslet, Blanchett, Kidman, Linney, et al. 

Todd McCarthy, Contagion review via The Hollywood Reporter

While Contagion has more (currently) sound science than the average science fiction thriller, Soderbergh still makes the mistake of assuming the research process is too boring for the big screen. It’s not an unfounded assumption, but it’s an assumption based off the idea that the technology and technicalities themselves must be the focus in depicting the research process in a narrative. The technicalities themselves might be boring to the average non-researcher (even for researchers in some cases) but the human drive behind such research is a rather compelling one.

Imagine: Dr. Hextall gets a sample of the pathogen, and begins the arduous process of identifying its microscopic components – is it a bacteria, a virus, a prion?; imagine too that once she identifies its molecular make up and its origins (courtesy of Professor Ian Sussman, played by Elliott Gould), Hextall must now go through the various trial and errors in creating a viable vaccine. Sure, the process itself might be boring to watch, but imagine the emotions attached to each step: the grueling thought process that tests the extent of current knowledge and its application to a unforeseen force; the ensuing lack of sleep that results because each minute she sleeps means another hundred (if not thousand) victims to succumb; the hope and disappointment when a vaccine is tried and fails; the moment of despair when nothing seems to work; the burst of hope when an epiphany results in a successful vaccine – the end result is still the development of a vaccine, but the emphasis on Hextall’s humanity as opposed to her knowledge of microbiology could have been a particularly moving and incredibly novel aspect of Contagion’s momentum. 

Don’t get me wrong, Contagion is not a bad movie; in fact, it’s a very good thriller that, save Krumwiede’s story, is tightly paced and bound to create mysophobes in its wake. It’s quite possible to make a dramatically moving zombie story (The Walking Dead is doing a superb job at the moment), and likewise it’s very possible to make a dramatically moving pandemic thriller that builds on Contagion’s strengths and shortcomings. The focus, unfortunately, lies a bit too much on the overarching realities of the situation – bureaucracy, technicalities, research – that, in a documentary, would have been more than appropriate; however, since Contagion is fictional, a tighter grasp on the aspects that make a compelling narrative (such as the human condition and confluence of emotions) would have made for a stronger overall film. I’m not sure if Soderbergh made the connection between pandemics and zombies, but if he didn’t I think he would have made wiser choices in the film’s narrative momentum – minus the bludgeoning. 

SIde note: when Hextall tests the vaccine on herself, she references Dr. Barry Marshall when her diseased and distressed father protests her actions. Marshall, an Australian, along with his colleague Robin Warren, is responsible for identifying the bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, as the agent responsible for gastric (stomach) ulcers in 1982. Up until this discovery, it was largely believed that gastric ulcers were associated (or caused) by excessive stress. At the time of Marshall’s discovery, however, the medical community did not accept his findings as sound, so in 1984 he drank a petri dish of H. pylori and subsequently took antibiotics to prove his point. The experiment was cited in 1985 in the Medical Journal of Australia. In 1994, the National Institutes of Health of America acknowledged Marshall’s findings as sound. 

Small quibble: I don’t know if the production of Hextall’s vaccine would have been as speedy as depicted in Contagion given how long it took for the medical community to accept Marshall’s findings, notwithstanding the issues of human trials needed to prove the vaccine’s effectiveness. But really, who wants to sit through that process? 


Recommended Reading

Contagion trailer, which is where I got the above images from.

Happy (early) Halloween, everyone

The Cat Returns (猫の恩返し）ー A Lovely, Absolutely Lovely Film

If you find yourself troubled by something mysterious or a problem that’s hard to solve, there’s a place you can go, a place where…

There are few movies that are so lovely, so absolutely lovely that you simply can’t find anything negative to say about them once the credits begin to roll in. Studio Ghibli’s The Cat Returns is such a film, and I recently had the good fortune of watching it after a tumultuous couple of days. 

The Cat Returns is a unique feature in Ghibli’s filmography because it was neither directed by veterans Hayao Miyazaki (My Neighbor Totoro) nor Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies), but by Hiroyuki Morita who began as a animator in the 1999 Ghibli film My Neighbors the Yamadas. Additionally, The Cat Returns is an indirect sequel to a previous Ghibli film, Whisper of the Heart, for a unique reason: in Whisper of the Heart, a girl writes and draws out a story about a cat named Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, a sophisticated feline who comes to the aid of those who need it, and his companion Muta, a large white cat who’s insatiable appetite is just as big (if not larger). Baron proved to be so popular that Ghibli was requested by a Japanese theme park to create a 20-minute short starring cats, and though the project was eventually canceled manga artist Aoi Hiiragi was commissioned and created the manga equivalent of the short, titled Baron: The Cat Returns (バロン 猫の男爵), featuring Miyazaki’s envisioned characters Baron and Muta, as well as a mysterious antique shop. The “Cat Project” was then used as testing grounds for future Ghibli directors, intended to be 45 minute short, and eventually Morita was chosen to proceed with the project. However, over the course of nine months Morita translated Hiiragi’s manga story into 525 pages of storyboard, thus influencing Miyazaki’s producer Toshio Suzuki to green light a theatrical length release mainly because Morita’s depiction of Hiiragi’s female protagonist, Haru, felt genuinely real and believable. This makes The Cat Returns the second theatrical Ghibli feature to be directed by someone other than Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, a definitively unique trait in Ghibli’s current filmography of eighteen completed films. 

The premise is this: Haru, a young high school girl who periodically runs late to school and is undeniably unsure of herself, rescues an unusual cat from getting hit while it crosses the street. It turns out she saved the Cat Prince Lune of the Cat Kingdom, and finds herself bombarded by (unwanted) generosity from the Cat King and his subjects as they fill her yard with catnip, her locker with mice and arrange her marriage to Lune. Distraught, Haru seeks out the Cat Bureau after hearing a kind voice suggest so, and finds herself in the company of Muta the obese white cat, Toto the raven, and Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, owner of the Cat Bureau. With the help of Baron, Muta and Toto (as well as others who I won’t name here), Haru finds herself in the heart of the Cat Kingdom and a great escape from the Cat King’s castle before she permanently transforms into a cat. 

Fanart by pinkfairywand on Deviantart

The story of The Cat Returns lends itself to such amicability and charm that it’s near impossible to feel miserable after watching seventy-five minutes of topnotch animation and beautifully harmonic music. Its primary appeal owes much to the protagonist Haru, whose uncertainty and insecurity ubiquitous to many high schoolers is animated so well and convincingly so that I’m sure many girls can easily identify with her minute quirks and mishaps, and the charming cat Baron, whose no-nonsense, straightforward and perfectly confident self could easily swoon anyone if he were any less anthropomorphized. Muta, of course, is the tubby sidekick with a snappy temper and gluttonous palate, seemingly selfish at first but soon revealed to be well-meaning at heart. 

While the story’s subtext is one of personal and emotional growth, The Cat Returns is so unassuming, so self-assured and so charming that frankly, the take away message is probably the least of your concerns after it all ends. It’s a simple story, and marvelously so: very much in the vein of classic stories of knights and heroines, The Cat Returns unpretentiously lays out a engaging narrative from start to finish, never once hinting the possibility of despair and unhappy endings; it all ends well – not in the typically sappy or grotesquely self-indulgent sort, but in the feel-good, down-to-earth mannerism typical of many Ghibli films like My Neighbor Totoro. There’s also a distinct element of magical realism prevalent throughout The Cat Returns, very much like the mythos and magic of Spirited Away and gaming-meets-real-life of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: in Morita’s film, there cats can go between their dimension and ours, and as Haru finds herself in a marital predicament she is invited and led to the slightly different albeit similar dimension of felines (it’s implied that portals can lead to and from human and cat dimensions, but not solely). 

For audiophiles of classical or film music, The Cat Returns is a must-own. Composed by Yuji Nomi (who always wrote the music for the indirect prequel Whisper of the Heart), this beautiful symphonic arrangement supplies tracks that are easily stand alone from the film and one another and support the animation without overwhelming the screen (a perfect example of auditory overload would be Star Trek in 2009). Those familiar with the music from Whisper of the Heart may recognize some similar motifs, which is a nice musical wink and a skillful, subtle addition to an already superb soundtrack. 

For animation enthusiasts, The Cat Returns delivers some of the finest to date. From the animalistic and anthropomorphic movement of felines to the subtle gestures, nods, twitches and shrugs of a young high schooler, it’s unsurprising that this film received the Excellence Prize at the 2002 Japan Media Arts Festival, an annual festival held by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs since 1997. There are some anime conventions here and there (but isn’t this always the case for all anime?) but the technical mastery of movement and expression distinguish The Cat Returns as an anime film that rises above many biases against conventions and stereotypes of anime. Nothing is jerky, abrupt, or feels inorganic – it’s all very weighted in reality, with an mixture of equally believable (or at least emotionally and aesthetically fathomable) magical realism and spectacular sights animation can achieve that live-action can only dream of. 

There really isn’t anything evil or malicious in this universe – plenty of monarchal misgivings, misjudgments and misunderstandings, but really which dynasty didn’t have their share? – so even in the moments of malice (and occasionally hilarity) The Cat Returns convinces us constantly that no matter what, everything will be okay. And indeed, the film delivers not only on its promise, but even more with its charm and inexplicable warmness that, in my case, washed away two days of troubles as if they never existed – the sort of gem that you’ll just have to experience for yourself. 

Some Screenshots from the Film

Music Links

• I’m Back, I’m Back Home Now!

• Baron

• Waltz Katzen Blut 

• Become the Wind - a wonderful cover by icsk8grrl of the song originally sung by Ayano Tsuji for the ending of The Cat Returns