Stefan Says So: Contagion1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteProbably Steven Soderbergh’s final film for now as he embarks onto a new artistic career, but as with all things, never say never to a medium he’s so masterful in, balancing art and commercial sensibilities in most of his films.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a bona fide disaster like movie that dealt with a pandemic (although there’s a recent Japanese film that didn’t make it here), and most virus-like attacks on cinematic Earth coming more from out and out science fiction films.
The last film I remember was Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak way back in 1995, but that was more action-adventure with its principal cast involved in almost every step of the way from outbreak to containment to cure.
Here, Soderbergh orchestrates his ensemble of stars in a very well-oiled fashion, compartmentalizing as would be in real life, each of the characters to their respective areas of responsibility, so that the film felt its scale and magnitude, and hammers home how so well connected we are these days that transmission methods whether airborne or through close proximity, will still spread like wildfire before we know it, geographical boundaries and constraints notwithstanding.
