One of my favorite jokes of the period regarding this downswing of creativity went something like this:

Q: How many lesbians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Six. One to screw in the bulb, three to sit around and discuss how phallic it is, and two more to make a documentary of it.

And watch many a lesbian film I did in those dark years, Dear Readers. And a host of other nonsense patched together by nearly anybody that could afford a video camera and had an "in" in Hollywood.

But let us not curse the demons of our past. Let us look upon a film that I recently viewed which gave a glimmer of hope for the future of smart, independent, non-rote cinema. Sadly, you have to look to Wales to find it, but it's worth your time. After all, they gave us Tom Jones, Dylan Thomas, Richard Burton, and Roald Dahl, didn't they?

This specific little gem is called Submarine and it's not so much the coming-of-age story of a 15-year-old Welsh boy as it is a cynical (and slyly comical) glance at how much it sucks to be fifteen no matter where you grow up. Add that our hero, Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), is a bit of an egotistical outsider and ever-so-slightly sociopathic and you have a delightful tale for the ages. I don't think I've ever seen a film that reminds me so much of Harold and Maude without it ever trying to be. Yes, it's about teen angst, death, confused sexuality, and parental detachment but, thematically, it lays claim to its own space. Think Rushmore meets The Young Poisoner's Handbook and you're getting close.

Oliver is prone to daydreaming. He's not quite a nerd or outcast at school, but his prospects for a girlfriend are limited. He begins to take notice of a similarly semi-popular girl named Jordana (Yasmin Page) and finagles his way into her sights through various calculating methods. Their infatuation blossoms disturbingly (she's a pyro, he's an undersexed enabler) and the romance is not of the candy/flowers ilk. She frowns upon any sort of sentimentality. He begins to enjoy this (he's a bit of an emotional ghost himself) as it makes his path to sex that much easier.

If the story was just about this twisted connection it would be enough. Yet director/screenwriter Richard Ayoade (from Joe Dunthorne's novel) also layers in two subplots about the kids' parents—one involving depression and infidelity (Oliver's family) and the other about cancer and loss (Jordana's folks). It never dips into mawkishness (the characters are too quirky for that) but does provide some weight to the otherwise glib proceedings. Ayoade's eye is so good and his camera work so imaginative and energetic, it would be difficult for the film to seem bogged down anyway. It's a very impressive debut from the first-time director.  

The performances by Roberts and Page are spot on. His delightful wryness is matched by her sly casualness. The key is in the many unlikable traits they both possess. They are not altogether good people. Neither is particularly attractive. They are physically awkward. There is cruelty, selfishness, betrayal, and insensitivity in their actions-- sometimes goaded on by the other. They behave stupidly. Act irrationally. In other words, they are falling in love and being teenagers.  

If there is one line that captures all the irreverence and deadpan satisfaction of this remarkable little film, it is this, spoken by Oliver to Jordana in his desperate plea to elicit sympathy and reconnect with her:

"My mother gave a handjob to a mystic."

Good stuff.

This mindset is quite understandable given the horror you’ve just witnessed. But I am not usually one drawn to excessive paranoia, hand washing, vitamin popping, or counting how many times in the last fifteen minutes I’ve touched my face. As a man of rare beauty, in a braille/feature appreciation sense, the face touching is easily explained away, but, the other OCD tendencies become quite alarming.

Contagion is the film that has reduced me to this hollow shell of fear writing before you. The film is so ruthless in its plausibility, so exact in its measure, that an outbreak such as it proffers, in this nation, at this time, would be the end of all we hold dear.

Not to say we are without our own self-induced septicity. The Grover Norquist/Ayn Rand virus ("Norqrand" as I have dubbed it – and a great corporate name for the company distributing it!) has already infected 40+% of our population. Unfortunately, it is not lethal in the short term. But it is airborne and aggressively trying to destroy mankind (the original strain was taken from tissue off of Alan Greenspan's taint). The proven anti-toxins of logic, common sense, historical fact, and general decency seem powerless to combat it. People absorb it against their best interest-- willing hosts to their own demise.

But we were talking about the non-human type of virus, not Republicans.

Steven Soderbergh is a peculiar sort of director. His career has spanned more than 25 years and it remains difficult even now to know exactly what his motivations for making films are. You get the artistic Steven with Kafka, Solaris, and Sex, Lies and Videotape; the Indie hipster with Bubble, Gray's Anatomy and King of the Hill; the socially conscious with Che, The Good German, and Traffic; and the downright mainstream with Haywire, Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, and the Oceans series. Yet his lack of distinct focus somewhat limits the seriousness of all his efforts and certainly his oeuvre.  Most of his pictures, although artfully crafted, come off as larks, cinematic joyrides-- a bright child's created plaything that holds his attention for a few days and then is discarded.

Contagion is rather different. It is a cold, analytical (one could say "antiseptic") gaze at how a freakishly likely pandemic might appear in the here and now. Soderbergh keeps the focus on the macrocosmic ramifications of such an outbreak (the workers of the CDC are highlighted often) and spares us, for the most part, the maudlin impact on the everyday individuals we would likely be forced to hold dear in a lesser, melodramatic effort. Most of the characters are particularly unlikable anyway (human beings as they are), so the film is never bogged down by outright sentimentality. A few glimpses here and there of the everyman's plight are enough to humanize the proceedings.

Soderbergh feeds our anxiety and sense of vulnerability from the outset with a rapid sequence of shots showing door handles, smudges on glass, touchscreens, a bowl of nuts at a bar, a mother hugging her child, transit ports, enclosed spaces, the busing of dishes at a busy restaurant, etc. You get a visceral sense of the germs around you. Hell, I saw this at a theater, and continually flicked hand sanitizer at those around me, accusatorily chanted "unclean, unclean", and simply stopped eating my popcorn out of the pure dread that the concession stand attendant had plunged his hands into the fecal matter of a downer cow immediately before serving me.

Contagion has a chronologically driven, globally intersected screenplay with politics, science, selfishness, survival, expediency, bureaucracy, classism, narcissism, and impending doom all wrapped in a moribund humanity bulging at the seams of this earth where our dependence on technology (travel spreads the virus exponentially and swiftly) and repudiation of science (lack of any proper adherence to birth control or hygiene) combines for the perfect storm. Our insatiable hunger for meat and callous disregard to the environment are no help either.

The film's only misfires are a threadbare effort to bring alternative media (blogging) and the evil of drug companies to the fore via Jude Law's character and a curious lack of any religious lunacy emerging amidst the terror. You know those proselytizing kooks would be looking for any angle to get a new toehold on righteousness as AIDs hysteria fades into the past. 

I'm not always a big fan of procedural drama (my naiveté toward the CSI franchise stands as proof) but Contagion got to me. People looking for a thrill ride will be greatly disappointed as it moves calculatingly slow. But for those of you who wipe their carts down in the grocery store, hold their breath while passing a coughing person in the street, or pop Zicams like candy at the first tickle in their nose, Contagion delivers a paranoid "what if?" jackpot.

And any piece of entertainment that kills off Gwyneth Paltrow in the first ten minutes always borders on genius to me.

Play a fun game while watching it. See how many times you actually touch your face during the screening—even after you've been alerted to how many times you do it. I'm touching mine right now. Mmmm. Germs.