Contagion a flick without a cure

Contagion (2011) Warner Bros. Pictures, Participant Media, Imagenation

With an all-star cast and people like writer Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum, The Informant!), one would expect director Steven Soderbergh (Sex,Lies, and Videotape, Erin Brockovich, Traffic) to knock one out of the park with his latest fare Contagion, a film about the ease at which pandemics can spread in an age when international travel is within the reach of millions.

The problem with Contagion though isn’t with an unknown superbug, it’s more that it’s a lumbering hulk of a movie that would have played much better as a public service announcement about what people should be doing in their everyday lives as a matter of basic hygiene—covering your mouth when sneezing, washing hands often, etc…

Despite its popularity with many critics and its tagline: “Nothing spreads like fear,” (which is probably what’s compelling audiences to see it) Contagion comes off as fresh only to those who’ve never heard of the History Channel and the numerous times this plot has been featured ad nauseam on shows about natural disasters and hypothetical pandemics.

And even though Contagion is packed with a literal who’s who of stars—Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet—it makes very little use of the talent on hand and delivers even less in the form of character development.

Beth Emhoff (Paltrow) succumbs first to the virus after having travelled to Asia but not before stopping off in Chicago for a quickie with an ex-boyfriend who also gets sick and ends up dying.

Poetic justice? Maybe.

In a bid to keep his sanity (while society unravels and after losing his wife and son to the virus), Mitch Emhoff (Damon) alternates between standing on line for MREs (meals ready to eat) and peeling his daughter’s (Anna Jacoby-Heron) horny boyfriend off of her all while planning his great escape to Wisconsin of all places.

Meanwhile, a stone-faced Dr. Ellis Cheever (Fishburne) icily admits “we have a virus with no treatment protocol, and no vaccine at this time” but is more preoccupied with evacuating his healthy wife Aubrey (Sanaa Lathan) than he is with his top field investigator, Dr. Erin Mears (Winslet) who after contracting the virus is unceremoniously buried outside a hockey arena in a mass grave.

On the other side of the planet, World Health Organization official, Dr. Leonora Orantes (Cotillard) is surreptitiously held hostage by Asian villagers while mega-blogger Alan Krumwiede (Law) sips forsythia tea and wanders around London wearing a jerry-rigged hazmat helmet that looks as if it were made from the plastic covering found on some sofas.

This is the kind of film that makes me wish I owned stock in a hand sanitizer company.

Still, Contagion manages to cough up (insert laugh track here) a couple of fine performances mainly from Dr. Ian Sussman (Elliott Gould, yes that Elliott Gould from MASH) who reminds Krumwiede that “Blogging is not writing. It’s just graffiti with punctuation” and Sanjay Gupta who plays himself.—Steve Santiago

“Incendies” a conflagration you don’t want to put out

"Incendies" (2010), Micro_Scope Productions, TS Productions,Phi Group

“War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it, and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”

So said Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman during the American Civil War but it also quite aptly describes the underlying plot of “Incendies,” a Canadian film released in September 2010.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve and adapted from Wajdi Mouawad’s play “Scorched,” “Incendies” literally translates from French as “fires” and delivers nothing less than a film characterized by epic brutality and terror counterbalanced by moments of human sweetness, empathy and sacrifice.

At a reading of their mother’s will, twin siblings Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette) are puzzled by her seemingly mad requests.

Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) insists on being buried face down, without a coffin and sans a headstone.

The twins always thought their mother had a screw or two loose but never really knew why.

When Nawal requests through notary Jean Lebel (Rémy Girard) that her children deliver two letters—one for a brother they never knew and the other to a father they presumed was dead—Simon walks out in disgust.

At first only Jeanne makes the trip back to the Middle East but once she starts piecing together who her mother really was—a student turned freedom fighter, assassin and later tortured political prisoner—Simon agrees to join her and find out the truth about their mother.

Although not directly stated in the film, “Incendies” takes place during the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990 during which up to a quarter million people were killed, over one million people displaced and Beirut, once regarded as the “Paris” of the Middle East, was destroyed.

Director of Photography Andre Turpin adroitly captures the vastly vacant, dusty landscapes of the Middle East with an uneasy beauty that avoids turning this film into a travelogue.

The horror of war is particularly brought to the forefront during a scene in which a bus carrying Arab travelers is ambushed members of a Christian militia who at a checkpoint riddle the bus with gunfire and torch it.

“Incendies” is a film that keeps driving forward like a wild herd of mustangs until delivering its unbelievable climax.

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2011, much of “Incendies” takes place during a period of war yet is not about war per se, but about how war and cruelty destroy the human soul and strip it of its brilliance and beauty.—Steve Santiago

Old debts sometimes better than new ones

"The Debt", (2007), Evanstone Films Ltd.

It seems as Hollywood continues to exhaust its pipeline of creative ideas for movies, it simply resorts to remaking foreign cinema  that it hopes will be more palatable to American audiences.

I’m not a big fan of Hollywood remakes of foreign films and the current remake of 2007’s “The Debt” is no exception.

For one, domestic remakes sometimes tend to run longer—the new “Debt” runs almost two hours as opposed to the original which runs a leaner 90 minutes.

Two, remaking a high-quality work of art is like saying you can make fine French champagne at home simply because you use the same ingredients and have a cool cellar to store it in.

“Ha-Hov,”—”The Debt” as it is known in English—is and Israeli spy thriller told in Hebrew and German which opened November 2007 to critical acclaim in Israel.

Written and directed by Assaf Bernstein, it stars Gila Almagor (as the retired Rachel Brener), Edgar Selge (Max Reiner), Itay Tiran (young Zvi), Yehezkel Lazarov (young Ehud) and Netta Garti (as young Rachel Brener).

The film opens in 1964 as Rachel, Zvi and Ehud, three young Mossad agents, return to a hero’s welcome in Israel after claiming they dispatched Max Reiner, the notorious Surgeon of Birkenau.

Unbeknownst to everyone except the agents, the story is a fabrication as Reiner managed to escape the agents’ safe house but not before laying a beat down on two of the agents—Rachel winds up getting slashed in the face and Zvi comes home with his arm in a sling.

Flash forward 35 years and the mission is considered a high point in Mossad history until Reiner’s name turns up in a newspaper article.

It seems that ‘Surgeon of Birkenau’ is not only alive but living well in an upscale Ukrainian nursing home.

Meanwhile, a retired Rachel has been keeping herself busy training new Mossad agents and authoring a book about the now famous mission which turns out is a complete farce.

Later when confronted by Zvi to finish the mission, Rachel refuses until Zvi reminds her, “What do you remember each time you see this (her) scar?”

He insists that Rachel be the one to dispatch Reiner before anyone finds out he is still alive.

At a cocktail party celebrating her new book, she goes for more champagne only to cut her hand on a glass and flashes back to the 1960s mission.

Apparently, the post-war period has been very kind to Herr Doktor who has now set himself up as a well-to-do gynecologist adept at using his speculum—what else would a former Nazi doctor do for a living?

Rachel Brener (Neta Garty) poses as a young married patient of the doctor who is trying to get pregnant.

With each appointment, she recoils in fear knowing the atrocities committed by her physician.

And Reiner’s arctic-like bedside manner doesn’t make it any easier as he icily stares at her and repeats, “This is my hand, and this is the speculum.”

The suspicious doctor also asks Rachel who referred her to him after detecting that her German accent sounded foreign.

“The war changed a lot of people,” Reiner flatly states both referring to his innocent victims and his new found success as an ObGyn.

The plan to smuggle Reiner back to Israel to stand trial gets derailed after he gets his hands on a razor and escapes the safe house.

Despite its subject matter, The Israeli version of “The Debt” is a breath of fresh air and features a new way of storytelling from an otherwise not well-known national cinema.

Other than “Ajami”(2009),”Waltz with Bashir”(2008), “The Delta Force” (1986), “Iron Eagle” (1986) and maybe a few others, Israeli films have largely been absent from American theaters except maybe for a few art houses in large cities.

If you want a longer movie featuring more gunfire, faster-paced music, Dame Helen Mirren and faster cutting, then see the American version of this film.

Otherwise, stick with the slightly older, more satisfying “Debt.”―Steve Santiago

A Kubrick-helmed “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” could have paid off better

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

When A. I. Artificial Intelligence was released in 2001, it seemed destined to become an instant classic with its profound themes that touched upon global warming, human
reliance on technology and dealing with child loss.

Ten years later, A. I.still resonates but for different reasons. This is a film that is more science than it is science fiction, especially now that 10 years have passed since it was first released and many of dire human conundrums that we are being warned about now appear to have taken place in the film.

Set in 2104, Henry Swinton (Sam Robards), and his wife Monica (Frances O’Connor) are grieving parents living in a society that depends on a genre of highly evolved robots called “mechas.”

The Swinton’s son, Martin (Jake Thomas) was placed in suspended animation for some unspecified disease until a cure can be found.

Enter David (Haley Joel Osment), a child mecha programmed to love.

At first Monica is apprehensive but later—thinking Martin will never regain consciousness—gives in and activates David’s imprinting protocol.

Monica must speak a series of words in a certain order for
David to “imprint.”

Everything is hunky dory until Martin mysteriously awakens
from his coma and a sibling rivalry ensues between him and David who at this
point has fully imprinted on Monica.

After learning that returning David to the company that made
him will result in his destruction, Monica decides to leave David by the side of a New Jersey road that somehow
has no traffic on it and resembles the wet forests of the Pacific Northwest.

It’s at this point that this film either runs out of steam or gets better as it transforms into “The Adventures of Pinocchio.” It all depends on who you ask.

David, on a quest to find the Blue Fairy who he believes will turn him into a real boy, meets up with Gigolo Joe (Jude Law).

After a series of depressing misadventures, David eventually
attempts suicide but is rescued by Joe.

Fast forward 2,000 years when the human race is extinct and
an even more highly-evolved mecha race rules the world.

David is thawed out from deep freeze by the mechas who allow him to enjoy a
brief period of bliss with a recreated Monica.

The happiness lasts only one day and in the end they both
drift off into sleep never to awake again.

If you think this is a good time to open a new box of Kleenex, you’re right.

A. I. was originally developed from Brian W. Aldiss’ short story, “Super-Toys Last
All Summer” and originally began development with director Stanley Kubrick
back in the 1970s.

It was later handed off to Steven Spielberg in the mid-1990s.

Ironically, Kubrick let the project languish because he believed that special effects technology wasn’t advanced enough to portray David the way he wanted.

This is the same Stanley Kubrick who didn’t have an arsenal of special effects on hand when he made 2001:A Space Odyssey yet he pulled that film off with such mind-blowing verve that it is now preserved in the National Film Registry.

Had Kubrick known how adept Law and Osment were at portraying robots—neither actor had a memorable performance afterward with the exception of Law in Cold Mountain—he might have reconsidered making the film himself and with it, movie history.–Steve Santiago