Contagion

Watching this with flu is only for the hard-nosed. The main protagonist is the contagion itself, that’s what it’s all about. An entirely new kind of movie, an emotionally sterile (and all the more impressive because of it) documentary about future things, which creates, through it’s infectious atmosphere, the insistent feeling of “so this is how it’s going to be, this is what’s gonna happen..." Of course, when it breaks out, it will be without Martinez’s perfect soundtrack. Which will be a crying shame. (2013-01-03)

Oh, shit! No more shaking hands with strangers... To the point, perfect craftsmanship. It documents the course of the infection in rather a minimalist manner and the life stories of people just happen by the by, and a chain reaction occurs that leads to others being infected. Surefire sterility is augmented by the music too. The literally disgusting Jude Law enjoys his role and Matt Damon is pleasantly civilian (there are no small roles). I was a little disappointed by the sloppy ending (even though it’s probably nearer reality), Contagion had greater potential. (2011-12-18)

Soderbergh doesn’t give a shit about the audience. Zero emotions, little tension, full of stars but without any of them shining too much on screen. Contagion is simply an unbiased and detached look at a global pandemic, and it’s actually that austerity and inhumanity what brings to the surface the horror and hopelessness of the situation. It probably only needed to dig a bit deeper into the issue, the last half hour felt too short. 7/10 (2011-12-16)

One might have expected the film to go against traditional audience expectations, yet Soderbergh manages to surprise us mainly through the optics he applies to the sloppy plot. He makes do with a documentary-like tone instead of spectacular crowd scenes and quite sovereignly lets the famous Hollywood names have minimal parts, for which they reward him with great performances. This is minimalism that digs deep under the skin. PS: This is the second film this year that was largely "made" by Cliff Martinez. (2011-10-21)

Steven Soderbergh’s variation on Hollywood disaster films is conceived as the exact antithesis of all of the attributes of the classic form of this genre established by A-level studio spectacles in the 1950s and definitively codified in the 1970s. At the same time, however, the aim of the film is not to subvert the genre, but rather to come up with a form of the genre for the era of extensive availability of information, so that it can again function effectively and arouse horror and tension in the audience, as compared to Emmerich-style popcorn tripe. The necessary foundation for this is provided by Scott Z. Burns’s masterful, intelligently constructed and information-packed screenplay, which is based on scientific knowledge and experience from the epidemics of that time (and therefore greatly corresponds to the real pandemic of 2020, unlike the naïve, fantastical scenario of, for example, Outbreak). (2020-05-16)