Reviews of two pandemic films by Nayana Alphonsa Mathew, II Sem MA English

The pandemic of Coronavirus (COVID-19) is raging across the globe today. The virus brought us to months of Lockdown and eventually to Quarantine, which we were not familiar with. This virus made the term ‘Quarantine’ so widely used, the Lockdown period marking it as the most popular word on social media. #QuarantineSelfie, #QuarantineMood, #QuarantineDays….the hashtags go on. However, this Quarantine period, which came into being as part of the pandemic, was fruitfully used by many people to dust off their hidden talents. Some others, however used this time to binge watch their favourite movies and TV shows. In short, this is a time when media service providers like Netflix and Amazon Prime have made the most financial gains. 

While series such as Money Heist and Dark have grown in popularity during this time, the movies like Contagion (2011) and Virus (2019) have also risen to fame because of the quality and freshness in their plot and making. These films have many parallels to the crisis that we face today.  The American thriller Contagion (2011) deals with a fictional virus MEV-1, and the movie is front-loaded with fear before turning into an alarming sociological study of what people would do during a quite realistic seeming pandemic. Virus (2019) is an Indian film, which is based on the true events encompassing the 2018 Nipah Virus outbreak in Kerala and the local community’s mobilisation effort to stop the spread.  Both these films, speak of some deadly pandemic that has hit their home country or state, and how they fought against it. The scenes from these movies are strangely similar to the ones we witness now, as, much of the world moves into Quarantine to put a check on the novel Coronavirus.

      CONTAGION (2011)

CAST: Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Ehle, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet

DIRECTOR: Steven Soderberg

SYNOPSIS: Beth Emhoff returns from a business trip to Hong Kong with a stopover at the Chicago airport, where she meet with her ex-lover. Beth feels ill, but thinks the problem is jet lag. She travels back home to Minneapolis and spreads the virus to her son Clark and to her husband, Mitch.  When Beth and Clark die, Mitch goes in quarantine, where the doctors realise he is immune to the mysterious virus. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, London and in a small province, cases of the mysterious illness are cropping up, as the American Centre for Disease Control and the World Health Organisation give their best effort researching the virus.  As the contagion spreads to millions of people worldwide, societal order begins to break down as people panic.

              REVIEW

Contagion (2011) is a pragmatic, unsensational film about a global pandemic. Being an American thriller, it gives us a terrifying speculation about a new airborne virus, and how it could enter a living person and spread unceasingly in a very short time. The virus in Contagion (2011) is a mysterious one. It openly resist seclusion, rejecting cure. When we think, why the world is suddenly obsessed with this movie right now, the answer would be that, this film by Steven Soderberg is prophetic in the manner it portrayed a pandemic and its repercussions.

The film begins with the character Beth Emhoff (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) returning from a Hong Kong trip with a disease no one has ever heard of. She dies soon, but what follows is precisely similar to what is going around the world right now. The disease, in the movie, is caused by a deadly virus, which is a mysterious one (later identified as MEV-1 virus) and it ends up taking the lives of thousands even as doctors make every effort to find a cure.

There are a few other things in the movie, which we can totally relate to our current situation. For instance, Beth Emhoff is identified as the index patient by the officials of WHO. But, the answer to how she gets infected with the virus is shown through a flash back scene, where, a bulldozer razes palm trees while clearing a rainforest in China that disturbs the natural habitat of some bats. One bat finds shelter in a pig farm and drops an infected piece of banana, which is eaten by a pig. The pig is slaughtered and prepared by a chef in Macau Casino, who transmits the virus to Beth through a handshake. So, all this started from an animal. Similarly, in the case of Coronavirus too, the epicentre of the pandemic is considered to be a meat-market in Wuhan province in China. But, when compared to the Coronavirus, the MEV-1 virus in the movie is highly deadly and contagious, which is impractical in the sense.

Personally, I found some parts in the movie very interesting. i.e., the movie makes use of some scenes which are scientifically accurate, to convey the seriousness of a highly infectious disease, to the audience. The scene in which the character Dr, Erin Mears (played by Kate Winslet) discusses RO (pronounced as R nought) and Fomites, is one of them. The RO value indicates how contagious an infectious disease is and hence it is an important marker to study the progression of a disease. Using the RO value, the transmission rate of a disease or its decline can be calculated. Fomites are precisely any object that can carry a pathogen. Fomites show how indirect transmission can happen among people compared to direct transmission through physical contact and body fluids.

There are some other things that the movie got right. The movie perfectly portrays how diseases can get transmitted among people. There are scenes, in which the people are feeding each other, sneezing or coughing, sharing objects etc… There is this scene, where the Kate Winslet’s character explains, that, “an average person touches their face 2000 to 3000 times a day.” The film got this right too. We do touch our faces thousands of times a day, and we share spaces with other people, which increases the chances of pathogen’s proliferation.  The movie also capture the emotion of being the centre of an outbreak through a scene in which, the character Mitch Emhoff (played by Matt Damon) talks with his daughter from the other side of a glass window. There is this other character names Ally Hextall (played by Jennifer Ehle), who is a virologist working for the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She is the creator of MEV-1 vaccine and she developed the vaccine by testing it on her own body, saving herself and millions of lives.

When we compare the movie with our present situation, we find that, in the movie, panic and fear increase rapidly because of the refusal shown by authorities in making announcements and providing information about the outbreak for several weeks. This caused the virus to spread rapidly and it killed about 25% of reported cases.  This is what we see through the dialogue of character Lyle Haggerty (played by Bryan Cranston), where he says: “We just need to make sure that nobody knows until everybody knows.” On the contrary, with the current Corona outbreak, the WHO and other official bodies are providing us with information and updates regularly.

The tagline of the movie is “Nothing spreads like fear.” It is this fear that we see, when people, in the movie, scramble and breakout into fights at pharmacies to buy ‘Forsythia’, an herbal treatment which is rumoured to be a cure for the MEV-1 virus.  This movie, in many ways, is an example of how everything could go dreadfully wrong if the information is not properly conveyed. 

   VIRUS (2019)

CAST: Indrans, Revathi, Rima Kallingal, Tovino Thomas, Sreenath Bhasi, Poornima Indrajith, Kunchacko Boban, Asif Ali, Soubin Shahir, Sharaf U Dheen, Indrajith Sukumaran, Joju George

DIRECTOR: Aashiq Abu

SYNOPSIS: A man named Zakariya Mohammed is infected and brought to the Govt. Medical College, Kozhikode, where he suffers from the symptoms of an unknown virus and after a few hours dies. He passes on the virus to 18 other people out of which 16 die. After enacting isolation and treatment protocols, a team led by the Minister of Health tracks the spread of Nipah Virus, using medical records, CCTV footages and in-person interviews.

    REVIEW

One of the biggest achievements of the movie Virus (2019), lies in its casting. It is definitely, a strong point of director Aashiq Abu, that, he was able to gather so many artists for a single project. Each one gets limited screen and no character in particular is projected as a protagonist in the movie.  As the film is based on real events that happened in Kerala, on the outbreak of Nipah Virus in 2018, it also features the real-life heroes who fought for Kerala at the time. This movie is a quintessential example for ‘perfect casting’. K.K Shailaja, The Health Minister of Kerala, has been magnificently portrayed by the veteran actor Revathi through her character C.K. Pramila. There is this dialogue delivered by this character, “When we tried to dig out the cause of spread of this pestilence, we found that, all those people were trying to help a suffering patient.” These words have caused an intangible sentiment in the minds of the audience. This emotion can be explained either as a joy of success, or, as a pain of losing someone or something. Similarly, the character of Akhila, a nurse, played by the actor Rima Kallingal, had a soul-stirring impact on the audience. This character is modelled after Lini, a nurse, who is a martyr in her battle with the Nipah Virus. Tovino Thomas, who portrayed the role of collector Paul V. Abraham, the one who, during the epidemic, embraced the district of Kozhikode with his perseverance, is also laudable.

But, beyond all this, there is this role by actor Poornima Indrajith, which caught my eyes. She played the role of The Director of Health Services, Dr. Smrithi Bhaskar, who could be considered the ‘next Ally Hextall’, as she, in a scene, agrees to test the vaccine on her own body. This scene, definitely, provides us with some realisation, which is so great, that, it teaches us about humanity and compassion. What we perceive through this scene is that, we are living in a world where humanity still exists, and we are surrounded by people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the wellbeing of mankind. Today, in the time of this Corona pandemic too, this realisation continues to grow.

Both Asif Ali and Sharaf U Dheen does a cameo appearance in the movie. Even though, both the actors’ cameo had them onscreen only for a few minutes, both their roles have taught us the pain of losing someone. Joju George, who played the role of an attender, also deserves an appreciation for his acting. The character of an ambulance driver, played by the actor Vettukili Prakashan, points to a group of employees who deserve commendation even during this hectic period of Corona pandemic.  There are many characters with such less screen time, but all of their performances, especially by Indrans, Parvathy, Kunchacko Boban, Sreenath Bhasi, and Soubin Shahir, are worth mentioning.

There is this question asked by the character Jameela (played by actor Savithri Sreedharan), who is the mother of Zakariya, “Was it my child who gave it to everyone else?” this question shows the anxiety of a mother who fears that her son would be hated by the people.  In the movie, when Zakariya is suspected of having a terrorist affiliation, solely because of being a Muslim (or a highly religious person, as mentioned in the movie), we are forced to think of the family in Kerala, that faced the same kind of accusation during the Nipah outbreak. The fact that many of us believed in such stories at the time of disaster is not one to be discarded.

Today, as we are surrounded by similar news that spread the speculation of Coronavirus being the Bio-weapon of China, we, people are confused about what to believe. However, the only thing we are sure of, is that, we will get through this, just as we survived the Nipah Virus.