Contagion, and being no fun
Nov. 7th, 2011 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jencatEesh, it's been such an odd week. And showing no signs of getting less odd, unfortunately...
Last night I kinda reluctantly went to see Contagion (it's hard to say no when I just had The LFF Splurge), and it was... more than a little meh, really. I think I read Steven Soderbergh had about a gazillion edits ranging from 3 hours to, er, half that - and went with the slimmed down version.
Erm, yep, you can tell. Want to see a whole bunch of Oscar winners faff about momentarily before disappearing without explanation? Then you should totally catch Contagion. Or.. not, obviously.
I mostly didn't want to see it because it looked fairly po-faced and depressing, and while it does like to pile on the close ups of icky dead faces , it's weirdly just po-faced and pretty shallow. . We flit around the globe in a seriously unconvincing mass epidemic, being lectured about loads of random stuff with zero through-line to the story, and very few consequences. What is the point, exactly? Tracking it back through Gwyneth's cheating wife character? Jennifer Ehle finding a vaccine? Matt Damon keeping his daughter alive? And don't even get me started on Marion Cotillard's 'arc' because it's just freakin' nonsensical.
I'm deliberately not even mentioning Jude Law because, wtf? It's bonkers, but boringly so (I would say batshit crazy, but seriously... batshit does literally turn out to be a major plot point. I wish I was kidding. I really, really do.)
Last night I kinda reluctantly went to see Contagion (it's hard to say no when I just had The LFF Splurge), and it was... more than a little meh, really. I think I read Steven Soderbergh had about a gazillion edits ranging from 3 hours to, er, half that - and went with the slimmed down version.
Erm, yep, you can tell. Want to see a whole bunch of Oscar winners faff about momentarily before disappearing without explanation? Then you should totally catch Contagion. Or.. not, obviously.
I mostly didn't want to see it because it looked fairly po-faced and depressing, and while it does like to pile on the close ups of icky dead faces , it's weirdly just po-faced and pretty shallow. . We flit around the globe in a seriously unconvincing mass epidemic, being lectured about loads of random stuff with zero through-line to the story, and very few consequences. What is the point, exactly? Tracking it back through Gwyneth's cheating wife character? Jennifer Ehle finding a vaccine? Matt Damon keeping his daughter alive? And don't even get me started on Marion Cotillard's 'arc' because it's just freakin' nonsensical.
I'm deliberately not even mentioning Jude Law because, wtf? It's bonkers, but boringly so (I would say batshit crazy, but seriously... batshit does literally turn out to be a major plot point. I wish I was kidding. I really, really do.)
