Contagion:
S.F. pandemic film finally having its moment.
The defining film of 2020 is a San Francisco movie from 2011, which for nine years was notable as the pandemic thriller everyone confused with Dustin Hoffman’s “Outbreak.”
“Contagion” covered Potrero Hill in garbage, rolled a few military vehicles in front of City Hall, shot a single scene at former San Francisco Chronicle reporter Benny Evangelista’s messy desk, and then got out of town. A decent movie that was quickly forgotten after its Sept. 9, 2011, release. The future predicted in the film seemed no more prescient than “The Birds” or “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”
And yet here we are in 2020, stuck in our homes like the people in “Contagion,” learning to correctly pronounce the terms “fomite” and
“R0” (arenot!) like the people in “Contagion,” and passing judgment on teens sneaking outside their pods like the people in “Contagion.”
It’s not quite documentary (city trash service has been superb ... so far). But the parallels between the movie’s virus, the coronavirus and the response to both range from remarkable to eerie. “Contagion” has become, through real life’s hardtopredict circumstances, one of San Francisco’s defining movies.
Other San Francisco films, including “So I Married an Axe Murderer” and “The Room,” have received interesting second lives, through cult status or rediscovery. “Contagion” belongs in its own category, effectively gaining a rebirth through its own clairvoyance.
The Steven Soderbergh film traces the path of a global pandemic, telling the story from the perspective of doctors, government officials and everyman characters. It contains an impressively deep international cast, including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Marion Cotillard. (Gwyneth Paltrow dies in the opening sequence, and by the 14minute mark the top of her head is being opened up with a bone saw.)
For the first 40 minutes, it’s a hurricane of science lessons and bad hygiene decisions. As a viewing experience, “Contagion” is a ticking clock.
The film was wellreceived by critics and made back almost twice its lean $60 million production budget. The Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle gave “Contagion” a positive Little Man clapping rating, with a final paragraph that should have us all combing LaSalle’s other reviews for stock market tips: “(It) might change your life,” LaSalle concluded. “You may never again be able to touch your face without asking yourself where those hands have been. In fact, yesterday might have been a good day to buy stock in Purell.”
And then the film was mostly forgotten. In an unscientific “best San Francisco movies” poll taken by The Chronicle in 2015, where the sequel “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit” received two votes, “Contagion” ended up with zero.
In movies that featured The San Francisco Chronicle newsroom, it was a distant third behind “Zodiac” and “Axe Murderer.” (Evangelista’s desk was picked for its clutter. He wrote an essay about it, reporting that his “Star Trek” Tribble doll remained in the scene.)
This was all before everything onscreen basically came true. The virus in “Contagion,” which has a much more lethal 25% to 30% mortality rate than the coronavirus, might as well be called COVID11.
The larger themes in Scott Z. Burns’ script draw eerie parallels between fiction and our current reality, from the fight to flatten the curve, to the race for a vaccine, to the hyping of a dubious miracle cure. But the film becomes truly surreal in the details. It’s as if the contents of a Chronicle coronavirus story pitch meeting — from the ethics of vaccine distribution to public officials to the girl who will miss her prom — are coming alive onscreen.
“Contagion” gained popularity as a streaming rental just as movie theaters, and many new film releases, suddenly disappeared. The New York Times reported that between December and March, “Contagion” jumped from the No. 270 movie in the Warner Bros. catalog to the No. 2 spot, behind only its “Harry Potter” movies. The film is currently No. 5 on the iTunes movie download chart, behind only 2019 films including “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” and “Knives Out.”
“Outbreak” from 1995 was filled with blunt plot devices and melodrama. Dustin Hoffman casts a strikingly diminutive figure in his enormous yellow PPE, managing to rekindle a romance with Rene Russo’s character while stopping the military from bombing the pandemic out of a Northern California coastal town.
“Contagion” ages considerably better. Soderbergh and Burns clearly listened to their hired experts, including epidemiologists Ian Lipkin and Larry Brilliant. While the journalism parts are all cliches and exclamation points (“Print media is dying, Lorraine! It’s dying!” Law’s character blusters, storming through The Chronicle newsroom), the science dialogue rewards repeat viewings.
Only about a quarter of the film takes place in San Francisco, with long scenes in Chicago, Atlanta, Hong Kong and Minnesota as well. But there are many unique San Francisco exteriors, including the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park, Civic Center Plaza and UCSF Medical Center.
The San Francisco scenes are some of the most memorable. Jude Law weaving through garbage in dystopian Potrero Hill, and running into a dying Chronicle reporter, is a chilling sequence. Candlestick Park gets a final moment on film before its 2015 demolition, as a vaccine distribution center.
“The hierarchy of San Francisco films” is one of the more trivial things that this pandemic will change. Perhaps the Music Concourse joins the “Mrs. Doubtfire” house and the “Bullitt” car chase route on tourist bus itineraries. Gwyneth Paltrow virus memes can get us through the next global crisis.
But during a year when bigscreen movies ceased to exist, another iconic film somehow emerged. Nine years after its debut, “Contagion” is a San Francisco movie for the ages.