Contagion (2011) - "We Have a New R0"

Spoiler Level – Low-to-moderate

The Movie – A deadly new virus quickly spreads across the globe, killing a fourth of the people it infects. Contagion presents a realistic depiction of how scientists, government officials, medical professionals, journalists, and the general public would respond to such a pandemic.

And things have only just started to get bad. From Contagion.

When I first heard about this movie, I was expecting some terrible science. Epidemic movies generally love to misrepresent how diseases work to make them seem more threatening. However, Contagion relies entirely on realistic science, and to me that makes it frightening in a way that other disease movies aren't. There's no bad science that allows me to easily write it off as just fiction. This could really happen, and it's not even a worst-case scenario. Well, at least it gives me an excuse to talk about how a movie can incorporate good science

The Scene – Contagion uses good science throughout its entirety, but there's one aspect in particular that stood out to me. Early on, Dr. Mears, a CDC employee, explains the concept of R₀ (R nought) to a group of health officials. R₀ the reproductive rate of the virus, the average number of people an infected patient is likely to pass the virus to. Dr. Mears goes on to explain several of the factors the determine this number and emphasizes its importance in predicting the severity of the epidemic. R₀ comes up again several more times throughout the story.

The Science – Contagion doesn't just use good science, it goes out of its way to teach the science to the audience. In the same scene that Dr. Mears explains R₀, she also describes fomites, surfaces that facilitate the transmission of diseases. However, it never seems like the character is just giving a lecture because the scene serves other purposes. For instance, the emphasis on fomites (and good directing) causes the audience to take notice every time a sick person touches a surface in a public space. A patient's contact with a bus railing becomes a horrifying moment.

Okay, maybe it looks a little bit like a lecture. From Contagion.

Another purpose of this dialogue is character development. Dr. Mears explains these concepts while other officials are caught up with petty concerns. Her knowledge and focus show why she deserves to be the one in charge of organizing the response to the epidemic. She's a character who can be trusted. To simultaneously teach the audience science and establish important character traits is impressive.

I also appreciate how the movie trusts its audience. R₀ is used later in the film without needing to be explained every time. At one point, knowing R₀ is key for getting the emotional impact of a scene. When the virus mutates, the severity of this development is conveyed by letting us know that the R₀ has increased. It's a huge moment in the movie. Things were already bleak, and they've gotten worse. Realizing these implications is entirely dependent upon understanding a term that most people heard for the first time less than an hour earlier. By expecting the viewer to possess this understanding, the makers of the movie show their respect for their audience's intelligence.

Sometimes the movie does use jargon that it doesn't have time to explain, but it does so in the proper manner. Everything the characters say makes sense in context, and it sounds like how scientists would talk to each other in real life. Anyone in the audience who is interested in these topics could easily look up the terms the scientists use and learn more. For fun, I turned on the subtitles during some of the more jargon-heavy scenes and saw that they even spelled most of the words correctly! (Although there was one weird exception where the caption says "atrophins" when it should be "adjuvants", which are chemicals that promote the immune response to vaccines. So yeah, there's my small correction for the hearing impaired.)

This movie was not messing around when it came to good science. From Contagion.

The only time truly bad science shows up in the movie is when a conspiracy theorist tries to promote a false cure for the virus. And that's probably the most realistic part of the whole film. I have little doubt that during a real epidemic, opportunists would seize the chance to sell snake oil to desperate patients. Such people are already encouraging AIDS and cancer sufferers to pass on conventional treatments in favor of homeopathy, detoxification, and other approaches that don't have any scientific evidence supporting their use. It's depressing but it's a persistent part of humanity.They will only ever be stopped when the public is too well-informed to fall for the deceptions.

Fixing the Scene – There's really not much to talk about in this section. Contagion is proof that it's possible to make a good movie with good science.  In fact, I think that the good science is part of what makes it a good movie. Keeping the premise realistic makes the emotions seem more genuine. It's tragic at times but triumphant at others. It leaves you afraid that such a pandemic could really happen but optimistic that we could get through it. I've never seen another epidemic movie succeed to such an extent.

Next Week – We'll use Evolution (2001) to discuss...well, you can probably guess.