Let’s have a mind and raise flowers.

Contagion is a whole heap of bad and I will discuss its failings and how it could have been better.

I like some of Director Steven Soderbergh’s work. I do. “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” is one of my favorite films from the late Eighties and I do like many of the film’s he has produced, notably “Insomnia” and “Syriana.” I think that he knows a bit about film and that
only makes “Contagion” all the more troubling to figure out.

Steven Soderbergh’s film “Contagion” fails in much the same way as some of his previous films.
Like “Che Parts One and Two” there is only a series of events–not scenes that drive the film with momentum.
Like “Traffic” its big company of actors in disparate story lines lessen the film’s focus and emotional impact.
But I liked “Traffic” and “Che” enough to sit through them and enjoy them for what they were.
“Contagion” had me squirming with anger and I caught myself swearing out loud to myself as I went home.

It is pure tedium. It takes its audience for granted: “There’s stars in this! You’ll love it!”
No we won’t and we didn’t. The audience I saw it with (on a Saturday night there were about twenty people in the theater)
were silent the whole time and left silently. Not ‘emotionally drained,’ but just depleted of energy. They’d sat through and hour and forty five minutes of monotony! My friend was just as shell-shocked as I.

Why Was This Film Made?
If this film had been made closer to the ‘swine flu’ or ‘bird flu’ scares a couple of years ago I could see producers feeling that a
film of this nature might have some interest. Was it written many years ago (by Scott Z. Burns) and shelved?

What Can Motivate Story Telling, And Why “Contagion” Has Almost No/Poor Motivation.
The ‘purpose’ behind a story (in this case movie making) can vary pretty widely. I’ve come up with some, and I’m sure you
can think of others.
1. Entertain
2. Titillate/Shock
3. Catharsis/Emotional Journey
4. Showcase Artistic Excellence–in acting, directing, editing, etc
5. Give Voice to The Audience’s Unspoken or Unconsciously Known Feelings

I don’t feel that “Contagion” does any of these, but rather it appears to have as its source the weakest type of
‘motivation’….
6. To Inform

Even documentaries which are created supposedly to inform are best when they move you. They are emotional, connecting,
they take you on a journey. You find out about yourself, humanity, a specific social concern, a person of interest…whatever it is, it
makes a difference to you.

“Contagion” views like a tutorial 101 on “How Government Agencies Plan To React To Epidemics.”

In other movies that feature an ensemble cast over many locations (“Babel” being one that has done it well recently) the
‘wide lens’ on the issues is grounded in good characterization and relationships that we care about.
“Contagion” does not have that, and it suffers as a result.

Scenes That Go Nowhere
There are so many individual scenes that have no driving need in them. Each scene feels lifeless and when you stack a series of
scenes like that together they make a movie that has no momentum, no need, no urgency, no drama.

Characters (and the lack of characterization)
The film’s great vacuum is the total absence of characters that we care about, are unique, have character arcs, and are in relationships that we connect with/care about.

Let’s start off with:
A) Gwyneth Paltrow. Do we care about this character? No. All we do know is that she is unlikeable because she is cheating on her husband (Matt Damon!) and while she is away from her child and husband on a business trip she’s at a casino acting like she’s Lindsay Lohan (the LiLo that used to be accepted at parties). She comes home, dies. That’s that. The weak-ass tacked on portion at the end we find out it is her company (a mining company tearing down trees) that is in part the cause of the outbreak. What irony! Ohhhh! Irony! Right?

B) Matt Damon. Do we care about Matt Damon? No. His wife dies and he’s like “Okay. Anybody up for casserole?” and then immediately his son dies and he’s like “More coffee anyone?” And then his daughter shows up at the hospital when he’s in isolation and they’re both like: “How’s the hospital food, there Dad?” “Ah, yah know. Not bad and there’s lots of it, don’t yah know.” At the end of the film we’re subjected to watching Matt Damon look at pictures of Paltrow having fun at a casino for like five minutes. Is this his “remembering the good times” moment? Is he giving us any idea that he’s pissed at her for being an absentee mom who’s globetrotting around the world at parties while he’s made to take care of their son and she’s cuckolding him with some schmuck in Chicago? Nope. He’s just gonna cry a bit. “Gosh, I miss my two timing absentee wife.”

Matt Damon had no character arc, and the one chance he had at it was lost. Here’s how:
Its set up that he is preventing his daughter from seeing her boyfriend for fear of her catching the contagion. He’s a man who’s been cheated on. Maybe there’s a more personal reason he’s coming between them! Nope. We’re never given that idea. It gets worse. At the end of the film when he creates a ‘Prom Night’ for his daughter and secretly invites the boyfriend over…is it because he’s learned to allow his daughter to make up her own mind and be okay with seeing her trust another person even though it could end in heart ache?
No.
Its revealed that the boyfriend has been given the vaccine! Ohhh! Good choice, Scott Z. Burns and Steven Soderbergh.
Nothing like taking away the last chance of a character growing and changing.

C) Marion Cotillard. Do we care about her? Nope. She is kidnapped! Oh! I might be starting to care! Nope. She’s just a ruse to get a
village some vaccine. She’s safe. Don’t worry. Does she has a character arc? Nope. We know nothing about her to begin with so when she “comes to find that she likes living as a pseudo-captive in rural China” we don’t care! Was she a cruel and heartless person before who didn’t care about kids or poor people or rural Chinese? Who knows. She may have been a nun before working for the World Health Organization and this was totally up her alley the whole time. We just don’t care.

D, E, F) I could go on and on. We don’t care about anyone here. Which sucks because this is a movie about millions dying and we don’t care about who lives or dies. We don’t feel anything for these idiotic, flat, non-characters!

Character Arcs, Decisions, Pivotal Moments
This movie has none.
A movie/story is driven by the decisions that characters make. Usually movies will have lead protagonists make ‘good’ decisions that we could probably have guessed they’d make but we need to see how they come to the conclusion. Audiences like to see the tension, the character under duress. Even the example of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the donkey. Okay, so he does it and we could guess that he might…But we’re given the scene of Jesus looking over Jerusalem and saying “You who kill your prophets” Damn! What a scene right? Gethsemane is the same thing: We see the travail. Its the decisions that show characters’ growth and change. But! We need to know what the person is about. What is their fear? Where do they come from? What challenge must they face and what problem must they solve?
Look:
We see Marion Cotillard in the airport after learning her beloved village was given placebo instead of vaccine. She stares blankly for like two seconds and gives up her life as she knows it to presumably go back to the village (to what? see them die? warn them? die with them?).
We see Laurence Fishburne give his vaccine to a kid. Maybe out of guilt? Who knows? Do we see any emotion about it or any pathos as he then goes to his wife and gives her a vaccine? Nope.
We see Jennifer Ehle inject herself with a trial vaccine and then go visit her dying dad (gimme a break). How can we care about this decision when in one scene we are made to see her subject herself to potential death and meet her father for the first time in the film and be given all this backstory about how he was a doctor also and told her about how “science needs to take chances” or something. It becomes a “flippant decision amidst an info-dump exposition while we meet a character who also by the way is on his god damned death bed.” Give me a break.

Missed Chances

1. We’ve got the issue of Paltrow cheating on Matt Damon. She brings sickness home that kills their kid. Is there any idea of how STDs are commonly brought into marriages through cheating?
2. Why not have a character arc of Matt Damon ‘doubting the goodness of humanity’ after his wife cheats on him and he sees all these people fighting over scraps (in very Un-Minnesotan fashion I might add)?
3. Why is there no idea about ‘paranoia?’ We have all these close ups of people touching things and there’s no sense of the creeping paranoia that we could always live in.
4. Why not show us the goddammed scene where Kate Winslet tells Matt Damon his wife cheated on him? Wouldn’t that be an interesting scene? We only hear her reference the conversation. Sheesh.
5. Why are we given ambiguity about whether Jude Law is lying about the homeopathic medicine or not? Wouldn’t that be a potential for a ‘twist’ or be revealing of his character one way or another?! Dammit, this movie is horrible! Was the CDC looking at the early drafts of the screenplay (since they were featured so heavily) and ask that nothing controversial be included about Jude Law’s conspiracy theory?

What Do We Learn?
1. China is dirty and is where flu comes from.
2. There are two black people in the world and one of them is Laurence Fishbourne.
3. America is where daring scientists kick disease’s ass.
4. Demetri Martin!
5. America kicks ass because “we shake hands, and always will, goddammit!”
6. Sometimes Elliot Gould is in a movie for no reason because he’s worked with the director in all three of the “Ocean’s Eleven” films.

This is a lot of very good actors put to bad use by a overly-hyped director. It is not a ‘serious’ movie, nor moving, nor interesting.
It is billed as a ‘thriller’ and it bastardizes the very word ‘thrill.’ It drags and bores.
It views like a movie that may have been a bad basic cable ‘Movie of the Week.’
Horribly bad. Yuck.

The Mighty Thor has become the God of gentle rains and cat naps.
I like Marvel’s comic Thor, but this film adaptation was a weak and very safe story with little to say or root for or believe in.
Why was this film so afraid to go out on a limb?
Why was there so little drama, dynamism, or strong characterization?

I was really only into the film up until Thor’s exile and then the movie drops away into a stale tale that instead of giving us a “prince’s mythic quest to become a wise king” we’re served up a cake walk of “a dumb lovable jock’s Sunday School lesson.”

(I’m going to offer up some possible solutions to the film’s problems in a sec–I promise I’m not going to just complain.)

Natalie Portman is hamming it up big time an artificial and awkward performance. I don’t know exactly if it was a bad casting choice for the part, if she is a terrible actor (which I’m leaning towards) or if she never caught on to what kind of tone and characterization the film/director were looking for.
The other casting choices were pretty spot on especially with Chris Hemsworth as Thor.
Kat Dennings’ character is the supposed to be the film’s humor (and she fulfills the task of the role well enough) but the humor is just not there and the character ends up just being this fawning Geek Fantasy(?) sidekick.

The opportunities for real drama are present but nothing is ever capitalized on and it ends up being just a milquetoast shrug.
The ‘final showdown’ of Thor and the Slow-Walking Fire Breathing Tin Can was as anti-climatic as reaching for the last Peanut M&M and finding it already gone.

And what, may I ask, was ‘Shakespearean’ about this?
I read it touted that the story was akin to the family dramas by the Bard, but if all it takes to be compared to
Ol’ Quill Scribbler Bill is sibling rivalry and an ailing King, just about every story could qualify.

How could Thor have been better?

1. Allow More Room For Thor To Grow:
I like that this superhero movie doesn’t need to go through the usual ‘origin story’ normally requisite for an introductory superhero movie. Thor is who he is.
Of course superheroes’ origins are not always about their gaining of their superpower, but how they decide to use it and their personal growth. When done well, this keeps the hero accessible and relatable.
With Thor, there is an arc of a cocksure and brash warrior learning the tempered wisdom needed to be like a wise king.
To give Thor more room to grow, a simple story tweak could have been used: not have the initial raid into the Frost Giants’ land be a ‘set up’ by Loki. There also could have been more of a fallout with negative consequences due to his unwise invasion.
Were the writers too leery about the possible political connotations to allow Thor these human mistakes? Of the ‘go it alone’ cocky cowboy attitude being shown to be devastating to a peoples’ overall security?
This ‘fatal flaw’ of Thor’s could have set up more growth potential for his character at the end where he could have displayed patient cunning to win against the foe Loki.
Which brings me to…

2. Allow More Room For Loki to Develop.
Loki is a jerk from the get go. He is shown to be treacherous and conniving from the very start and we learn that his plotting started even before the narrative of the film.
If Loki was given more moral ambiguity he would have been much more interesting.
It would have helped also to have just a little bit of a picture of how Loki would have wanted to rule Asgard. If he were allowed to state simply some good plans for how Asgard would be made better under his leadership, we would be able to understand and empathize a bit more with his character.

3. Create a Cool Enemy for Thor to Combat.
We see Thor face no real threat!
(Aside from the ‘sacrifice scene’ of course…more on that in a second)
The closest we come is maybe his fight with the tough Shield Agent in the mud. That fight is not interesting and plays like a Patrick Swayze brawl scene from Road House.
In the comics and cartoons, Thor is given many interesting foes that test him and push him to the limit and it was unfortunate that we were not allowed to see him face a truly daunting foe…whether in his ‘god’ status or in his ‘Ordinary Joe’ status.

4. Create a Sacrifice Scenario That Doesn’t Require Thor to “Have Read The Script”
A trouble that you see some movies get into is characters making decisions that don’t make sense given what they know.
It is almost as though they have “read the script” and somehow have access to more information than what the story has given them.
So when we come to the ‘sacrifice scene’ and Thor says of Tin Can Man: “It just wants me.” and allows it to kill him, it is an
unreasonable action because there could be no way for Thor to know that his being killed would stop the monster.
Why wouldn’t he have some doubt about whether this giant Tin Can Man would just keep on destroying the town and even the world?
This ‘death and resurrection’ scene is fine: there’s just about no hero story (super or otherwise) that won’t include some sort of ‘conquering the grave’ motif but I just didn’t like the way it was set up.

5. Give Thor Motivation to Love Natalie Portman Aside From Her Hotness.
Hollywood has a legacy of writing female characters poorly and this leads many movies to rely on the fact that the leading lady is “hot” to motivate the hero to fall in love with them.
The one thing that we could possibly see as being a (non-hot related) motivation for their attraction?
Thor is the God of Thunder and can control the weather.
She loves storms.
Its like a hockey player meets a hot girl who likes to watch hockey.
“She knows who the Red Wings are! I think I’m in love.”

6. Reincorporate The Adoption Theme
This would be a small story decision that could solve a number of problems I had with the movie.
Imagine if Natalie Portman is a single mother with a little kid (kids are a great way to convey the childlike wonder we
should have with this kind of movie anyway–we might be able to connect with a child’s first introduction to the idea of Thor) and she is not a storm chaser but a cop, a fire fighter, a nurse, a mayor or some other admirable profession that might give her character more connection to a ‘prince-like warrior.’
Thor as his ‘ordinary joe’ persona could face very human conflict of Natalie The Single Mother dealing with a human threat in town and Thor would have to step up to help her and could be shown taking her child “under his wing” and being a father
figure.
This would echo the fatherly care that Odin showed to Loki, give more character connection being Thor and Natalie Portman, allow Thor to face daunting human foes that could give him a sacrifice scene with real danger.

Anywho, the film was okay and I would barely recommend it even for those viewers who like Thor.
I do like Thor quite a bit and I thought the “fallen from grace”, “unrecognized God/Hero” motifs were used to pretty good
effect.
I also liked that Hawkeye made a cameo (one of my favorite Avengers).
And what was up with the “easter egg teaser” after the credits? Boring, blah, and meh.

Bottom line: I give Thor two Mjolnirs out of five.

Hanake again makes a beautiful, troubling, and penetrating film that strengthens his reputation as a master of contemporary film.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie–which I had to step back and be amazed at: here is a recent black and white film with no musical score and a large ensemble cast of characters without a strong arc for any of them.
Truly a unique film (and I can understand why some are turned off by it), it is a ‘thinking’ film that like his previous films Funny Games and Cache are ‘meta’ commentaries on the relationship between filmmaker and audience.

Some will say that The White Ribbon is about the milieu of Germany and its generation that came of age in the second World War.
I would disagree with that. I feel that it is an over simplification.

It is very important in the viewing of the film to take into consideration that it is the Teacher’s recollection and is ‘told’ through his ‘voice.’
The opening narration is very instructive. The Teacher says he feels that while the story he will tell may shed light on ‘what happened in his country’ he says he is not sure how much of it is true–it is from his memories and from the gossip of the townspeople.

So while the film does follow Hanake’s theme of guilt, assigning blame, suspicion, and implicating the audience members as judges and co-conspirators, the film is about memory and collective memory.

The events told are selected to tell a story. Whether connected or not, a ‘narrative’ or ‘explanation’ must be pieced together to somehow make sense of the horrors of Germany’s Nazi era.

Do we and should we take the narrator’s view as truth?
Should we accept these events as bringing meaning to the Holocaust?
I would suggest ‘no’ to these questions.

What I do love about this film is its subtlety.
One note that rides as an undercurrent is the depictions of various violences towards women.
As an example, we can see male power over women in the two scenes where relationships are ended.
The first, the Doctor demeans his lover with cruelty and even prods her to kill herself. She is seated and he is standing.
The second is when the Baroness ends her relationship with the Baron. She is seated, he is standing and she diplomatically tells him that she is leaving. He appears unchallenged. The scene concludes with him leaving to speak to another man–why? To hear the news of war breaking out–as though this is the concern ‘of men.’

We see corrupted power on many levels, we see pardon given where none is deserved (the Pastor extending grace to his daughter in communion) and unsubstantiated accusation.
Where we as an audience are challenged is: while we are being presented with so much immorality and moral ambiguity and so many crimes–are we still looking for an answers to be given to ‘wrap up the story?’

How do we reflect on the past of our own lives?
How do we hold ourselves accountable in the present and why do we turn a ‘blind eye’ to so many glaring injustices right in front of us?

A great, beautiful film that desires a conversation with its viewers.