Commentary - Contagion

Even when I change my pocketbook to a small dress purse, besides lipstick, keys and phone, the one really essential items is hand sanitizer.  In my everyday purse, I carry Airborne. I have never once left a public bathroom without using a paper towel to open the door. I use a glove to pump gas, and feel we should adopt the Asian way of bowing to one another in greeting, rather than a hand shake, of which, the former has more spiritual significance anyway.

So I guess you're getting the picture, that a movie like Steven Soderbergh's pandemic, bio-threat thriller, Contagion is really my worst nightmare! Both he and screenwriter Scott Z. Burn do an amazing job of keeping this movie seriously realistic.  This is no what if, scifi, action-packed blockbuster. The film feels more like a premonition of a world-wide, horrific event. In fact, it was kinda eerie seeing it on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

It's hard to believe it's been over a decade since I've seen Soderbergh's Oscar winning Traffic, although I've always meant to watch it again; but I strongly recall the movie's large cast was used very effectively with seamless transitions and brilliant interweaving of storylines.  Contagion uses similar techniques, with yet another all star cast (Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, John Hawkes, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Sanaa Lathan, Kate Winslet, Enrico Colantoni & Bryan Cranston), plus many more excellent performances by less well-known faces.

Another thing that comes to mind after watching Contagion is a video I watched a couple of weeks ago by the organization Project Camelot. They interviewed a medical editor, Jane Burgermeister who did an expose in 2009 on a research facility in Austria, Baxter International, who allegedly, intentionally sent a quantity of human H3N2 viral material contaminated with live H5N1 (Avian Flu) to 18 European laboratories.  According to Jane and her supporters this deliberate act was set to begin a pandemic virus that would eventually lead to a world-wide genocide of millions of people. Only the virus wouldn't be the killer, that would only start the panic; the killer would be the vaccination or supposed cure. She had a 19 page document outlining that the World Health Organization, backed by the banking industry would be behind this conspiracy and that they will have the power in the face of such an epidemic, to take over completely and have authority over every government to enforce vaccinations. The idea is that most people will want to be vaccinated out of fear. Others will follow the authorities that says you must be vaccinated. Anyone with a mind of their own will be rounded up and "quarantined".  I've embedded the video below.

I'm not sure what I think about all this, I don't intend to become a conspiracy blogger, like Jude Law's character, Alan Krumwiede in Contagion, but I always keep an open mind to all possibilities. That reminds me, there's a very funny line in the movie delivered by Elliott Gould in which he says to Alan (Law) "blogging is not writing, it's graffiti with punctuation!"