Warning: SPOILER ALERT!!
At a time like this – when being afraid of Coronavirus has become the new “normal” – the 2011 thriller Contagion has never felt more relevant
Soon after returning from a business trip to Monaco Beth Emhoff dies of the deadly and contagious virus MEV-1. Her son Clark gets the virus too, and then many others, until suddenly people all over the world are infected to the point where it becomes a pandemic.
The film tells the story from many points of view, including that of Beth’s husband Mitch, who has been put in quarantine. We also see the pandemic through the perspective of other families all over the world – including in London – and through the struggle of the US government to contain it. Most importantly we follow the work of the lab which is desperately trying to create a vaccine.
If we’d watched this when it first came out in in 2011 most of us would have dismissed the story as unrealistic. However, given the current circumstances Contagion feels uncomfortably realistic.
The pharmacy riot scene in which people wearing face masks smash glass to get what they need has echoes in today’s scenes of people in rich western countries pushing staff out of the way in supermarkets to get supplies.
In Contagion we see how easily this invisible enemy can spread, just through us touching the same things, or shaking hands, or even just standing close to each other.
More than the occasional brutality, the scene that made me worry most about where our own pandemic might lead was the one towards the end when a worker standing by a mass grave says, “We’re running out of body bags”.
So yes, the film made me more afraid about our own situation, but I also really enjoyed it. It was a great drama, but it also offered fascinating insights into how a virus is spread in the first place.
But fear not. In Contagion a vaccine is found in only 131 days, and Mitch’s daughter Jory does eventually get to go to the prom – even if it’s just at home – reminding us that life will eventually return to normal!