I decided to while away the (remaining) time with 2011’s Contagion, directed by Steven Soderbergh. I knew almost nothing about it except the title and that it was something to do with a lethal disease, “well that sounds all right, if I’m going to die, choking on my own lung fluids,” I thought.

I ‘d forgotten Soderbergh’s style so was a bit wrongfooted when Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow appear but then drift out of focus as she gets ill and looks like a crack whore. I even began to wonder if it really was Paltrow and Damon, as both look kind of, well, ordinary.

Anyway, there are lots of scenes of people touching things all over the world.

Some of these people then start sweating and looking ill.

Jude Law appears, sporting an odd English accent and a hat and tie:

this is, I suspect, an American’s idea of an Englishman.

Anyway, Paltrow dies like a dog.

Doctors tell Damon “she died” and he replies: “but we just had dinner” then looks at the doctors angrily, panting like a retard.

Then his kid dies. The kid is called Clark, what is it with Americans and their names.

Various vignettes of scientists in conference rooms.

Scientist exits a building, is intercepted by Jude Law, who is apparently a “blogger” whatever that is (it’s as if the writers are stuck in the late 90s).

Scientist: Get away from here, you’re not a doctor and you’re not a writer.

Jude Law: Yes I am, I’m a writer.

Scientist: Blogging is not writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.

I suspect the writer/director were not being ironic here; that they actually think all real writers are published by mainstream firms, and if you can’t get published it’s because you’re just vermin of some kind.

The rest of the film is basically various scientists, played by famous actors, doing lab tests and trying to find a cure; the civilian aspect is mostly seen through Damon’s character as he realises that “people are only as good as the world allows them to be” (the Joker). He gets a gun. There’s a sense that the victims are actually trying to infect others, as a women tries to grab Damon and his daughter in a supermarket, screaming “help me!” – but it’s almost as if the only relief she can imagine is to share her death with others.

Meanwhile Jude Law’s character deliberately creates panic on Twitter, in order to peddle a homeopathic cure that doesn’t work. The benign governments and World Health Organisation officials and scientists work on a cure while trying to control the population; as one bureaucrat puts it, “we just need to make sure nobody knows, until everybody knows”

Of course the benign scientists and global bureaucrats find a cure at the end.

Overall, I found it an enjoyable film though the New World Order is a little rich for my palate: the heroes being Soros/Rothschild/etc-funded bureaucrats (having met some of these, I find them appallingly incompetent and ignorant, not to mention nauseatingly “progressive”), and Law’s character presumably a representative of every non-mainstream writer/creator.

I’m unsure if the film would really persuade anyone to trust the government and distrust independent researchers; but I suppose as propaganda, which it clearly is, it’s just one more little nudge in the direction desired by certain masters, certain parties.

It’s quite good as a film, however, and I enjoyed seeing Gwyneth Paltrow’s character die.