CONTAGION

[JingWang]

After seeing the movie, I feel comparing the real life, the phenomenon after viruses exploded in the movie is milder. In reality, the spread of the virus will be very fast. It’s not like the movie that found another case every few days. The virus is not giving people time to react and prepare.

I think the characters in the movie are all realistic. In the face of disaster, couples with good feelings in real life will also doubt each other’s infidelity, even though they live together day and night. But there are also young children who still keep together for love. The father is also very true to secure his daughter from lovers. Jude Law played a talented reporter in this movie, he is smart but always has no opportunity to display, like a small person who lacks resources in real life.

If the epidemic breaks out in the real world, I think people's performance will be more orderly than the movie. Because similar epidemics have occurred in recent years, such as SARS, bird flu and so on. These precedents provide us with enough data and resolutions. Therefore, I believe that if there is another epidemic, we will be fully prepared.

Although I believe that the development of medicine will not cause us to panic, I still feel some concern during the viewing. Because we don't know what kind of behavior we are infected with, causing an unprecedented epidemic. In recent years, new viruses have emerged in an endless stream. And we can only implement the medical plan after the virus is found. In the fight against infectious diseases, human beings are still relatively passive. By developing good habits and exercising, we can resist the invasion of microorganisms from the roots.

[ZeroHZH]

I think Contagion is a high score film because it not only shows the process of finding a resolution of an epidemic but also presents the humanities of different people. After Comparing Contagion with the real world, the scenarios in the movie are close to real lives. For example, the hospitals try to isolate the infected people in order to stop the virus spreading. In my opinion, this is the most important step to do first.

However, there are some differences between the movie and the reality. They should need more factors and data to figure out the R-noughts. What’ more, most of the behavior of the characters is real. For instance, the doctor tries the vaccine by herself and Dr. Cheever gives some secret tips to his wife are common in reality. And the public response to the panic is real such as the rob, the crime, and the murder. When Emhoff met his daughter and talked with her, I almost cry. It shows how much the father loves his daughter and how tough he is. It let me know that whatever difficulties we meet, we still have families who support us.

[HarrisonLiu]

Comparing with reality, this movie basically shows the possible phenomena when the virus outbreak, whereas, in my opinion, I think that the real situation might be more serious. When the SARS outbreak in 2002, I remember I have to stop-go to school and study at home. In the movie, when people get sick, their response looks scary. Since people are easy to get attached to the virus, which means that people are exposed in the contagious environment, according to the data, the mortality rate is high.

The movie also shows the public hysteria, and I believe the hysteria would be grave if people real face the disaster. When people really perceive the dangerous, we could not imagine how people get crazy. For example, people try to get the medicine illegally, however people might do more unlawful behavior when their lives face dangerous.

Last but not least, in the emotion part, I can understand the scary of people. When I see the doctor tries her vaccine and takes off her mask to hug her father, the love of family really touch me. In conclusion, this movie is valuable.

[ShiKunyi]

I think the characters' behavior is realistic. For example, the indication of patients is realistic and the journalist wants to make money through spreading false information. Doctors also implemented some realistic protocols. If a similar crisis were to happen in the real world, people would respond unhurriedly, because technology and healthcare are advanced at present. After watching this movie, I feel so astonished because of the data of mortality is large.

[Yiqin Mao Aries]

This is a very good disaster movie. After watching the whole movie, I felt not only the fear of the impact of epidemic, but also the touch of family members and the professional ethics of doctors. The acting is excellent, and there are a few memorable moments, such as the shock, grief and despair of the loss of his wife and son. The film's characters are also very successful, such as the attending doctor, who is both sympathetic to his patients and has to hide the truth for his own benefit because of authorities. In fact, the reality of human life is the same, no one is perfect, people will always have a selfish greed side, this film is very real.

In terms of the plot of this film, there are not many plot turning points. Responding to the connotation of film, the whole film seems to be telling a story, without too much heart-wrenching issues, but more reflecting people's vulnerability and weakness before the epidemic. And they just want to find solutions. But I think the best part of the play is the lighting. The use of lighting in this play is very ingenious, which makes people feel very comfortable. The switch of indoor and outdoor lighting is not stiff at all. I think the weakness of this show lies in that many story lines are told at the same time, but the relationship between them is not handled well. Some consequences of things are not explained clearly in the end, which makes us have a lot of doubts.

In conclusion, it's a good movie that leaves people in awe of the power of biotechnology.

[Ameraljabr]

This movie depicts the difficult stages that a vaccine must go through to be out for public. It took the effort of many countries and organizations to develop the drug. It also briefs the idea of how live attenuated vaccines works, they work by injecting the human body with the virus after it’s been weakned in order for the defense cells to adapt the future attacks of the same virus.
The fascinating part of this movie is how it depicts the human psychology during an outbreak. For example some sensitive and critical information must always stay hidden from the public to keep the stability of the community.

As in every epidemic, there are always these individuals who feed on society fear. The conspiracy theorists will always be there to suspect every government decision and throw it with false allegations . They usually spread misinformation with flacky sources and present them as an absolute fact.

The movie also tells about how we sometimes forget about the germs and bacteria in public places. We really can keep ourselves safe from most of the airborne viruses by easy precautions,such as keep washing our hand after any public physical interaction and wearing a mask. An interesting part about the movie that it doesn’t follow the chronological order, you won’t know what happens in day 1 except later. Watching the movie with subtitles enriches the audience with medical terms, I’ve learned many words and terms after watching.

The only negative part about the movie is the lack of characters development. In the first minutes of the movie the husband Matt Damon loses both his wife and child leaving us with not enough time to bond with the characters. All in all, an interesting thriller movie to watch that captures the human behavior during a catastrophe and in some ways gives an overview how to act correctly whenever such an incident occurs.

[chongyiw72]

Chongyi Wang
03/10/2019
Movie Review of Contagion
The fictional virus in the film was spread to the first victim by touching animal blood with the virus. In the real world, many viruses originated from animals like Ebola. People who touched the blood of the sick bats began to carry the virus, and they spread the viruses by touching others. Ebola viruses can get into human body by many forms of fluids. The process is very similar to the process shown in the movie.

However, I do not appreciate the behavior of actors because it was not realistic. For example, the man who was isolated in the hospital and was thought to be immune to the disease at the beginning of the film did not wear masks and gloves at all. Besides, Sun Feng who took care of a cluster of children was somewhat unnecessary to exist. In the end, he received the placeboes because of the fraud, but the results of him and his children were not discussed.

If the outbreak took place in the real world, I think the government would act rapidly to comfort public and try to develop the cure. After watching the movie, I feel nervous about our future because I doubt that we can defeat every breakout of the severe contagious viruses, I may wash my hand more frequently and try not to touch animals.

[maikuu]

I was very impressed by the thoughtfulness of the comments and how wide-ranging they were. Here is a brief summary of my observations. In several cases, I noticed boosting when hedging might have served the authors better. (You know who you are.) . A number of authors drew comparisons between the fictional world of the movie and the real world, some flattering and some not so. I like how some were able to identify and even expand on emergency-response protocol. Someone even asked which was worse: MEV-1 or the human race. Cute.

As for writing style, there was a sophisticated mix of narrative and opinion among most of the responses. Nice work! A number of authors observed that there were a number of subplots in the form of personal stories. Some felt that this was handled well, while others lamented that there was a lack of character development and dilution of the overall story leaving questions unanswered. For example, what would be the fate of Sun Feng (Ching Han) in Hong Kong and his covey of children after they received a placebo vaccine? My take is that there was strong implication that Dr.Orantes (Marion Cotilllard) would have gone back to warn them and to continue helping them.

There was even a spot a sympathy for Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law). Very cute . . . "He was a smart man". I really love how many authors noticed that a disaster movie can bring out the best in family relationships. Again and again, y'all commented on how family members pulled together to get through a crisis. This is a universal trait. Several authors indicated an opinion about how the three MEL articles and the movie complemented each other (Good work.). And finally, one author expressed great admiration for the indoor/outdoor lighting scheme of the movie.

So, yeah. There was quite a range of thought, all interesting. At IMDb, Contagion has a viewer rating of only 6.6 out of 10 with 200k votes. So obviously there is criticism of Contagion. I personally rated the movie pretty high, especially from an ESL perspective because of the subject nature (actual story) and the use of academic and technical language. I also like the matter-of-fact tone of the film and the fact that a terribly dramatic situation never seems over-dramatized, when it sure could be. For me, this makes the film seem respectful to the characters and their tragedy. I would guess that Steven Soderberg, an acclaimed Hollywood director, was disappointed in the critical reaction to Contagion. Peace, Out!