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Movie Review - Contagion

Do you all remember that evening when we heard about Covid-19 for the very first time? Quite a fresh memory isn’t it?

We saw movies on pandemics but we never thought of such dreadful pandemics happening in reality.  It jostled out of nowhere and made our lives, a living nightmare.

As we are quarantined amidst world’s biggest crisis since World War II, not knowing when it will all end and normal lifestyle will prevail once again, I thought of revisiting my childhood movie collection and found a movie named “Contagion” released in 2011. Never have I ever thought that I could actually relate to something like this.

So, why not write a review on it?

 Directed by Steven Soderbergh, “Contagion” is a smart, spooky thriller about contemporary plagues. The cool precision with which Steven Soderbergh depicted a deadly virus spreading throughout the world, quickly claiming millions of victims is commendable. There's no great panic in his tone, no hysteria. Set in the world-is-flat now, the movie tracks a mystery pathogen after it catches a ride on a flight from Hong Kong to Chicago, an early hop for a globe-sprinting pandemic that cuts across borders and through bodies effortlessly. This scenario is already familiar to us as we are thriving in covid situation.

 “Contagion” begins with Gwyneth Paltrow's character, Beth, coughing as she reaches into a bowl of peanuts at an airport bar on her way home to Minneapolis from a business trip in Hong Kong. This is Day 2, we are told, and she will end up being Patient Zero. With the help of a low-key but propulsive electronic score, Soderbergh steadily focuses on the hands as he jumps from Chicago to Tokyo to London in these early scenes, steadily revealing how we pass our credit card to a waitress or grasp a bus railing or press an elevator button.

Kate Winslet's character, the steely Dr. Erin Mears, who thrusts herself into the vortex as the virus starts developing, offers a chilling statistic to some skeptical medical administrators: We touch our hands to our face 2,000 to 3,000 times ... a day.

Matt Damon, as Paltrow's stoic husband, Mitch, tries to stay strong and protect his teenage daughter as it becomes clear that they're both immune. Jude Law, believably skeevy as an online journalist with questionable ethics, digs for the truth of the story - but government scientists are just as keen on stopping the spread of information as they are the disease itself.

 The disease spreads quickly, though, and no one in the disease prevention industry can get a grasp on it. They first have trouble limiting it, all efforts of which prove to be futile. Then they have trouble replicating it in a lab setting, which only gets fixed with a non-government doctor ignores orders to destroy his samples and continues his work. They then have trouble figuring out how to actually attack it, until one of the chief scientists circumvents procedure and injects herself with the most promising vaccine they've developed up to that point. Then, the story's still not over, because while they do have the vaccine, they also have millions and millions of people who need it, and they can only make so much at a time, so a lottery gets developed to distribute it out by birthdate.

 At the very end of the film, Soderbergh adds a brief scenario explaining where the virus may have come from in the first place, and how very few degrees of separation there were between its origin and a woman from Minneapolis. Whether this could happen in the way Soderbergh illustrates is beside the point; all viruses originate somewhere, and in an age of air travel, they can reach a new continent in a day. The movie follows the protocols of techno-thrillers, with subtitles keeping count: Day 1, Day 3 and so on. Another way the movie captures the messy reality of this situation is how it uses its characters in the press.

 It's a movie about this ever changing process to get an unseen threat that's debilitating the world order under control. It's not about characters going through big emotional changes with catharsis for them at the end of the film. It's a thriller on a global scale. What it sets out to do, it does extremely well. I think it's one of the most effective thrillers in decades.

 So…if only we pay heed to “wash hands often”, “use hand sanitizers”, we can try to keep these at bay.

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Book Review - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

I am an avid reader but of late I have started choosing books on the basis of its genre. Psychological thrillers, mystery novels, philosophical novels thrills me a lot. Though I love reading, yet I have never tried my hands on reviewing any. These series of lockdowns made me so bore that I thought to start reviewing.

So, I just finished reading a mystery novel, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” by British writer Mark Haddon. “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time” is an incredible rollercoaster of a tale, narrated in the first-person perspective by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy having high-functioning autism, living in Wiltshire with his father. After discovering his neighbor’s dog has been murdered, he sets off to find out who the murderer could be. As Mrs. Shears, the dog's owner, calls the police, Christopher comes under suspicion. He even hits a policeman when he touches him, Christopher is uncomfortable with being touched. He is arrested, then released with a police caution. He then decides to investigate the dog's death, despite his father's orders to stay out of other people's business. He is severely limited by his fears and difficulties when interpreting the world around him. Some people is shown struggling to deal with Christopher because he can be so uncompromising but I found him rather loveable. He is also completely true to himself, brilliant and like his hero Sherlock Holmes, driven by logic not emotion. Throughout his adventures, Christopher records his experiences in a book, which he calls a "murder mystery novel". Without giving away the ending, he manages to solve the mystery of the murdered dog in the most extraordinary way and becomes the unlikely hero of the story. Not only are his detective skills excellent, he manages to get brilliant marks in maths exams without a lot of revision.

The book ends with Christopher optimistic about his future, having solved the mystery of the murdered dog, gone to London on his own, found his mother, written a book about his adventures, and achieved an A in his A-level maths exam. This is one of the most original and thought provoking books I have read.  It has had a great impact on me as it has made me think differently about people with autism and understand their ways of thinking and other talents are amazing and important. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys mystery, moments of heartbreak but ultimately a happy ending and plenty of humor along the way.