Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011)

I was not sure what to think going into Steven Soderbergh's latest film. I think Traffic was a really enjoyable film, that suffers slightly from the level of it's ambition. It was performed and directed beautifully, but by trying to cover almost every possible angle through which one could possibly see the War on Drugs, it was just too much, and one or two of the story lines ended up seeming underdeveloped, and therefore, unnecessary. It's the kind of mistake or problem I like to see a film make. I'd rather see a film be overly ambitious and fall short some than be exceedingly successful in it's mediocrity. So, I've always given Traffic the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, Traffic isn't the only film Soderbergh has made. There were those three little movies with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, Oceans something or Seas something. There was also the first movie, Sex, Lies and Videotape, which in it's own weird way prophesied the coming of reality television, the video blog and other bits and pieces of contemporary culture. Soderbergh has made a ton of small independent films as well, even since he's become the kind of director who can get Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Matt Damon on the phone anytime he wants and can get studios to give him large sums of money to make his films. He's taken the "I make one for me and then I make one for them" model of a director's career to a new level. There's no question that the guy is incredibly talented, but I was a little bit worried that Contagion, a drama dealing with the outbreak of a hypothetical virus and examining society's reaction from almost every conceivable perspective might suffer from some of the same failings that Traffic did. I wasn't prepared to cut him quite as much slack this time either, since it's ground he's already covered.

Contagion is a solid thriller/drama, all around. The direction, performances, cinematography, and score are all very good. My only complaint about the film is essentially that the stories of many of the people we follow could be entire films in themselves. I think that given the scope of this film, the writing is very good overall, and the thing is, I want to see more of it. The best example I have is Jude Law's character. He plays a blogger who is on top of the contagion from it's first public appearance. It's an interesting character and his motivations aren't completely clear at all times. There are definitely some questions about why he's doing or saying certain things, etc. But what we see of the character by the end of the film makes sense, and fits very well in the world they've crafted within the film, which does in many ways mirror our own world very well. The thing is, I want to see an entire film about that character. I want to know how he's gotten to be who he is at the beginning of the film and see him take the entire journey to where we see him at the end of the film. In a way, I think that would have been more interesting than the small disparate pieces we get by taking such an overarching approach to the story.

Lawrence Fishburne plays the head of the CDC, and I have to say, it's great to see Lawrence Fishburne playing something that doesn't in the slightest resemble Morpheus from The Matrix. He's a phenomenal actor and for a little while there, any character that had any shade of Morpheus was getting thrown at him. This character is most definitely not the super-guru Morpheus was, and it gives Fishburne the chance to flex some of the more subtle, emotionally mature muscles that roles like that denied him. I'd even like to see an entire film focused solely on his character. What exactly does it mean to be the head of the CDC in the midst of a major pandemic? What toll does that take on a person, what strengths does it give them? There's a whole lot there that I think could be really interesting, especially in the hands of someone like Fishburne. He does a great job, and his character is one of the centerpieces of the film, but it still doesn't really convey the toll it's taking on him, personally, and by the end of the film, it's clear there is going to be one.

The one I'd probably most like to see though is an entire film dedicated to Matt Damon's character. He plays a father and husband whose wife returns from a trip to Hong Kong, complains of not feeling well, and within a few hours goes from having flu like symptoms to being dead. He ends up being immune, but the daughter that is left with him might not be, and the rest of Damon's storyline is about what he's doing to try and keep his daughter safe, etc. Soderbergh doesn't make the film extremely graphic, but there is some stuff in there that is pretty disturbing not because it's graphic in nature, but because of how true it rings and what it really suggests about society and the nature of humanity in general.

In the end, when I think about the film, that's really the only thing about it that seems to fall short at all, but at the same time, it was a little flat for me. I'm attributing that sense of it being a little flat to the fact that by going for such a widespread perspective, the film doesn't give the audience enough time with any of the particular characters to really develop a connection with them. I do recognize that by making a film like this, that's something a film maker decides to do. I don't think it detracts from the degree to which the audience is invested in the urgency of the story.

I think my main criticism of this film could have less to do with the actual film than with the overall media environment into which it's thrown. Contagion successfully attempts to establish a level of realism that is one of it's biggest strengths and possibly it's ultimate downfall. Given that we're living in an age of constant media bombardment and that the entirety of our media is preoccupied with disaster and death and that nearly everything, whether deservedly or not is presented to us as being overwhelmingly urgent, I don't know that anyone could make a film about this subject matter, steeped in the degree of realism that this one is and have it be as emotionally and psychologically effective as it probably should be.

If I really consider the possibility of a contagious disease something like the one depicted in the film were to crop up somewhere and start taking the kind of effect it would, I almost think the majority of the country and probably the world would be both terrified and completely numb to it at the same time. In the film, the societal consequences of the virus are relatively dire. I somehow just don't think we'd get upset enough about it for that to happen. Mind you, it's not that I think it wouldn't be a big enough deal to get upset about, I just think we've spent so many years now with one dire emergency (real or manufactured) after another that we'd more or less just kind of see the news coverage and say, "Meh. That sucks." Sure, we'd take precautions, wearing masks and gloves, washing our hands much more often etc., but all in all, I think we'd probably just keep going to work, buying sport utility vehicles, and living our daily routines as much as was possible.

I'm not saying that cooler heads would prevail either. I'm just more or less saying that Americans have lost the capacity to know when to freak out when we should. It's not even that we've lost the capacity to freak out altogether, because I don't believe that either. I'm more or less saying that we tend to freak out about stuff that has no real meaning and in the end, doesn't really matter, and when there are things that have consequences, have real meaning and do matter, we tend to get overwhelmed and just go about our routine, hoping someone will take care of it. I also can't really be completely convinced that there wouldn't be an overwhelming percentage of our "leaders," be they political, social, economic or religious who wouldn't see something like this as a golden opportunity to cement their positions as "men/women of the people" for the foreseeable. I mean, let's be honest here, there would be a whole rash of religious figures coming out of the woodwork to say a contagion like the one depicted in the film is punishment from God for a whole grab bag of sins and iniquities, which is almost a subliminal suggestion to those people who believe those charlatans that we all deserve to die. I don't think people who on some level believe they deserve to die are going to get quite as upset about something like what the film presents as they probably should, and in this country, that is not a small number.

So, the degree of realism the film achieves might actually work against it. At least it did for me. One of the most disturbing sequences I've seen in a film in a long time took place in another film dealing with an "infection" of the populace. In Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, Cillian Murphy's character Jim wakes up in a hospital after England has been ravaged by an infection. When he stumbles out of the hospital, the streets of London are utterly deserted. That was deeply disturbing to me. A huge, silent London. It wasn't realistic (as many people have pointed out), because given the nature of the infection depicted in that film, there would have had to have been bodies all over the place. But there weren't. There were no bodies, no people, no animals, nothing, just London, one of the world's great city's, completely silent and utterly deserted. That disturbed me. There are a few scenes in Contagion which touch on the idea that people wouldn't be going on, so there were nearly empty streets etc., but nothing in this film was quite as effective as that one moment in 28 Days Later. I know they are completely different films with completely different objectives, but I'm suggesting this because Danny Boyle's choice (in part due to budget constraints) to step away from the steely realism much of the rest of his film relied on worked perfectly and helped create a really iconic moment. Contagion, because of the degree of realism it chains itself to never produces any moments like that, and really, much as I imagine a real world would react to the situation it presents, becomes a well produced, technically strong film which doesn't really suffer any gaping holes in it's quality, but is still more or less forgettable. If it were the real world, and we were struck with a contagion like this one, chances are very good that within fifteen years, it would be forgotten in every way except for science textbooks, lecture halls, the occasional news cast and the private pains of people who'd lost loved ones. I'd go so far as to say that in our actual real world, it wouldn't take long at all before a great many people were using the entire incident as a way to create an entire industry of more panic, more urgency, misplaced blame and accusations in order to enrich themselves.

In truth, I guess what I'm more or less saying is that as bleak a situation as Contagion suggests, the real world is an even bleaker, darker place, and the film suffers because it glosses over that. And in that, it's unfortunately extremely standard.

The Adjustment Bureau (George Nolfi, 2011)

No science fiction writer has had as many of his works adapted for film as Philip K. Dick. It’s unfortunate for his legacy, and the movie going public that the majority of those films have been terrible. The Adjustment Bureau is the of the great sci-fi visionaries works to make it to the big screen, and although it’s certainly lacking in the kind of ambition that often made Dick’s work so wonderful, this is a fun movie. It’s not reinventing the wheel, and it’s not going to set the world on fire becoming a cultural phenomenon, but it succeeds at the goals it sets out for itself more than it fails.

David Norris is a political wonder boy. The youngest person ever elected to the House of Representatives, he’s now running for the Senate. It seems he’s destined to win, until a newspaper releases photos of him making a drunken ass out of himself at a college reunion by mooning some old frat brothers. On the night of the election, when it becomes clear he’s going to lose very badly, basically a landslide, he goes to write his concession speech. He wanders into a secluded men’s bathroom in the hotel where his campaign is headquartered for the evening, and begins the unenviable task, after loudly asking if anyone else is in there. Laboriously trudging through his work, Norris is finally finishing his speech when a young woman comes out of one of the stalls. And this is how David Norris meets Elise Sellas, throwing the trajectory of both of their into a tailspin, altering both of their destinies.

And in short, that’s what this film is about, fighting one’s destiny. The central plot element surrounds the idea that destiny is controlled, and that it’s controlled by The Adjustment Bureau. When your life deviates or seems as if it might deviate from the plan it is supposed to follow, the films suggests it’s this shadowy group of semi-supernatural folks who step in to set it back on the path that’s been laid out for you. David Norris and Elise Sellas are not supposed to be together. Unfortunately, David Norris isn’t interested in going along with that plan.

George Nolfi manages to keep it light on the metaphysics, which is all for the best in this case. There’s a quasi-religious aspect of the story that if more heavily laid on would have become the kind of sluggish exercise in tedious exposition that good science fiction literature is often saddled with when made into film. This isn’t a film that needs to have all of this too heavily explained and I think Nolfi in both his screenplay and his directing is smart enough to tread lightly in that territory. He explains what he absolutely has to, when he absolutely has to, and when explanation isn’t necessary, he sticks with the films real assets, Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.

Matt Damon’s real talent is that it’s extremely easy to relate to him. He brings that talent to this film as well as he has any other before it. Even while playing the new golden boy of American politics, it’s easy to believe him, to relate to him, and eventually to sympathize with him and root for him. Very few people will ever actually experience the kind of precipitous rise and deflation that Damon’s character does in the film, but we’re with him the entire way, because of his extremely affable and sympathetic demeanor.

Matt Damon’s talents would be completely wasted without someone we believe his character would be able to develop the kind of connection that sets the narrative in motion. Emily Blunt's character could have been just another in a line of female characters that's already too long. Essentially, she's a grown up Manic Pixie Dream Girl who has matured and developed enough discipline to have a successful dance career. She could have ended up coming off very much like Kate Winslet's character in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind or Natalie Portman's character from Garden State. Instead, her character comes across as a confident, self possessed young woman with a good sense of humor and straightforward enough manner that it's easy to believe Damon's character would fall hard for her, especially under the circumstances they meet under. This is the first time I can remember Blunt getting the opportunity to play a modern woman in a world that resembles our own, and she's knocks it out of the park. There isn't much about this film that could be called special, except for her performance. Emily Blunt is a bonafide movie star at this point, but even as this film isn't going to shake the world up, I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that this performance puts her in the running for roles directors wouldn't have considered her for before they got a look at her work in this film.

The Adjustment Bureau is a fun film, built on the foundation designed by one of science fictions greatest writers. It's smart enough outline the philosophical underpinnings of the source material, but also smart enough to know that in a film meant for a mass audience, the dangers of collapse are all too great if those underpinnings are too deeply mined. The real story here, in both the films narrative and in looking at what in the film is worth giving time to, is the chemistry between Damon and Blunt, and ultimately, Blunt's ability to take a role that wasn't particularly well fleshed out and to breath life, sincerity and spontaneity into it. The Adjustment Bureau is a fun date movie, with good performances and there are worse ways to waste two hours, but there are better ways as well. I don't feel like the film was a waste of my time, by any means, but if given the choice between seeing this again or watching any number of other films I've seen before, I wouldn't choose this one.


Fandango has tickets to local showings across the country.

True Grit (The Coen Brothers, 2010)

Joel and Ethan Coen are truly original film makers, and I think I finally nailed down the elusive "Coen Brothers style." They are able to use character and story to elevate their films to the level of real cinematic art, and at the same time carry off the kind of low brow comedy most "artistic" directors run from as if it were plague ridden carrion. By never turning their noses up at either, they are able to deftly and effectively mix the two in a way the presents them as parts of the same whole, which is a real truth.

In True Grit they have a character who is an excellent representation of the same kind of duality. Mattie Ross is a fourteen year old girl, who hires a U.S. Marshall as a bounty hunter to track down and bring in or kill the man who killed her father. It should be mentioned that the girls father wasn't involved in any kind of criminal activity. He was actually trying to convince his killer not to go and kill someone else. Mattie Ross is no fool, as we quickly come to understand through a few business exchanges she conducts to arrange for her father's body to be shipped back to their home, and then with a livery owner who had sold him some horses shortly before he was killed. Both scenes have some very funny moments, and they impress the idea that Mattie Ross may be a young girl but she is no fool. Then she begins pestering the local law enforcement to find out what progress they've made with tracking her father's killer. When she's basically told there isn't and won't be any progress because U.S. Marshall's are the only one's who have any jurisdiction there, a few questions lead her to the idea that Rueben "Rooster" Cogburn is the meanest bastard of the bunch, and Mattie's mind is made up at that moment to contract old Rooster to find her father's killer. 


This film differs from the 1969 version in that it's not really about Rooster Cogburn. It's about Mattie Ross and her relationship to Cogburn, and the events that follow her hiring him for the job. Hailee Steinfeld is pretty amazing as Mattie Ross. She's got some television credits on her resume' but this is her first feature film, and she steals her share of scenes from older more experienced actors. This is a strong character. She's not the usual child character thrown in as a plot device. The film's title, True Grit, is as much referring to her character as to Cogburn or anyone else in the film. The character is childish in only one respect, her extremely black and white view of right and wrong, and her bullish nature when it comes to getting what she thinks is right. At first, these come across as very adult qualities, but as the film progresses, it becomes clear that she may not have been fully aware of the price for that particular kind of childishness. When Matt Damon shows up as a Texas Ranger who informs her the man who killed her father is wanted in Texas for killing a Senator in Texas, there's a considerable bounty on his head and that he intends to take him back to Texas (I think the film takes place in Arkansas, but I'm not completely positive, and the only thing that really matters is that it isn't Texas), Mattie dresses him down handily. As far as she's concerned, there is only one right in the situation, the man will be caught, tried, convicted and hanged for killing her father, not for killing some Texas Senator. Not everyone is a fan of Matt Damon, I know. He's given one or two very good performances, over all he's passable and always likable. Steinfeld overpowers him in this scene. Part of this is due to the story, because her character is supposed to be able to verbally overpower him, but Steinfeld makes it real. There's none of the mugging which is common with child actors, no score to tell you that's supposed to be the case, and the way the scene is actually shot, looking up at Damon and down and Steinfeld, it's not the visual representation either. It's all her. She imbues Mattie with that exact duality in this scene because it's obvious that the girl's sense of right and wrong, her sense of injustice, is over riding her sense of the humanity of other human beings, which in essence is what a sense of right and wrong and morality is really all about. At this point in the film (very early on), it hasn't tipped it's hand though, and Damon's Ranger Leboeuf (which he pronounces "Lebeef") is a bit foppish and definitely concerned with the image related to being a Texas Ranger in that day and age. There are some great lines in that scene, and it's very funny. 


I have to confess that I am not someone who has had the kind of love and respect for Jeff Bridges that I've been reading so much about recently. I thought he was very good in The Fisher King, and of course, The Dude in The Big Lebowski is an iconicly awesome character that he brought to life with real  slacker charisma and charm, but for some reason, I just never really thought much of him. It's not that have actively disliked him, it's that I literally didn't think much of him. He's not someone who jumped to mind when I thought about great actors living and working today. His turn here as Cogburn has helped to change that. Because this character was originally portrayed by John Wayne, the comparisons are going to be inevitable. I don't really think it's fair to compare a living actor to a dead legend. Wayne is an icon of the magnitude that our entire culture is still characterized by in some parts of the world. I haven't seen the original film since I was ten or twelve years old, it's not so heavily etched into my mind to be unable to separate the two films and characters. Also, John Wayne's Rooster Cogburn was tailored specifically for him, and apparently this character is much more directly lifted from the original book. Bridges does a great job of portraying Cogburn as a man who is good at one thing only, tracking down and killing fugitives. It seems that when he's not doing that, he's a drunk and a bastard, though sometimes he's a drunk while he's chasing fugtives, which provides Bridges some great material to play. In watching Bridges play Cogburn, I realized that I've rarely thought of him because I'm usually too entertained or horrified (as in the opening of The Fisher King) to sit there thinking, "Wow, that Jeff Bridges is really great." I know a few people who have a violent distaste for Bridges, and that's too bad because they'll be missing a really great film and the kind of entry into the genre that helps to keep the Western alive. Much of that is due to Bridges. 


Barry Pepper and Josh Brolin have small roles in the film as well. Brolin plays Tom Chaney, the man responsible for the death of Mattie's father, and Pepper plays the leader of the gang Chaney's taken up with, "Lucky" Ned Pepper. Brolin's Chaney is a dim wit, without the kind of swagger most of his other roles have entailed, and he handles it deftly. His character is stupid, but also quick to anger, as Mattie Ross and Cogburn are, and that's generally a bad combination in film and in real life. He's also waste deep in self pity, which if he were slightly brighter might be a trait I'd dislike in him even more. But he comes across as literally too stupid to know better. In No Country for Old Men, Brolin's character definitely made some poor decisions, but I don't think I've ever seen Brolin play a character this utterly stupid before, and the sincerity he's able to express in that stupidity is impressive, even in the short time we see it. Barry Pepper, well, he's Barry Pepper, and he's characteristically great in his small role as well. There are a handful of actors I really wish were getting better roles more often, and he's one of them. It's possible that the reason I've never seen a bad Barry Pepper performance is that he's not getting enough work to have turned one out, but I doubt that. I always love this guy, no matter what I see him in, and I always completely buy him in whatever role he's playing. He's a relatively young actor, so hopefully at some point in the not too distant future, he'll get the kind of break out role which will afford him the ability to choose whatever projects he wants. 


Once again, the Coen Brothers turn to Roger Deakins as the Director of Cinematography. He's worked on a number of their previous films, and again, the results are gorgeous. Westerns are known for their wide open vistas, and there's some of that, but much of the film is also spent lingering on medium distance shots of Mattie and Cogburn, which gives the cinematography the same duality that the story has. On one side of the frame you have the gruff, roaring, unatmable Cogburn whose final idea of right and wrong comes down to who's standing and who's dead, and on the other side of the frame there's Mattie, whose obsession with seeing her own justice meeted out set the whole story in motion. It also serves to help establish both a sense of real isolation, as if they are out in the middle of a wilderness into which few people wander, and that in turn helps to create a considerable sense of realism in the film. And really, it's just beautiful. The colors are deep, rich, earthy and warm. I don't even have to look it up to know that this was shot on film. This is the kind of movie, with the kind of look that makes me hope that the film industry doesn't completely scrap film in favor of strictly digital photography for a very long time to come. Digital can look great and also be beautiful in it's own way, but this is something that I don't know I've seen recreated with digital photography yet. Most of the film takes place in the wilderness, and so far, film captures landscapes and natural settings more beautifully and more naturally than digital does. And it should be mentoined that Carter Burwell's score of authentically period music is gorgeous and understated, never placing itself before what the story and the visual presentation are. There are a few beautiful solo piano pieces which I intend to pick up. 


This is probably the most traditional, straightforward and mainstream variety of film the Coens have made. The source material seems to have lent itself to their style quite well though, because it's still very much a Coen Brothers film in it's tone and it's content. It just lacks some of the more surreal or exagerated aspects of their other films. I'd basically suggest this film to anyone. Coen Brothers fans aren't going to be disappointed because it has the strong characters and story we've come to expect from them, but it's not as absurd or bizarre as some of the films they've made which have turned mainstream audiences off. All in all, it's not the caliber of work that Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing or O' Brother Where Art Thou are, but it's still one of the best movies I've seen this year. Probably the best things I can say about it is that I can recommend it to anyone and it's definitely the kind of film I'll be able to watch repeatedly. It'll be the kind of film which will become an old stand by. When I can't decide what else to watch, True Grit will never be a bad choice.