This is a group portrait American blockbuster, which is very different from the typical Hollywood style in the past. The individual hero did not win. The public recognized a conspiracy theorist as an opinion leader, and the world was in panic.
because everyone encountered a rapidly spreading infectious disease.
The film "Infectious Diseases" is inspired by SARS in 2003. Director Soderbergh is good at shooting group portraits. With a concise and coherent montage technique, he depicts the current humans and their choices in disasters.
Global panic
The beginning of the movie "Infectious Diseases" is very calm, but the cool color filter makes people take a breath in this calm.
American Beth felt unwell after returning home from a business trip in Hong Kong. But she didn't think too much, just as it was because of the long-distance flight and her body was too tired. Then she started coughing and fever, and soon the bad news came suddenly and Beth died at home.
Beth’s husband was still in grief when he discovered that his son had also died of illness. At this time, no one thought that the hidden matter behind this was a huge disaster for all mankind. Director
is good at multi-line narrative. When shooting a disaster film that leans toward realism like "Infectious Diseases", multi-line narrative makes the film present a grander overall perspective.
An overseas traveler is about to hand the credit card to the bartender. A business meeting begins with a handshake and greetings. A man coughs on the bus... These unrelated images happen in different time and space. The director blended together with a cold and rational narrative perspective.
People gradually discovered that more and more similar symptoms appeared one after another: cough, fever, dizziness, and then death.
What's bad is that humans don't know anything about the virus of this infectious disease. Its source cannot be traced back. It only knows that the genetic sequences of bats and pigs appear in it, which can be spread through contact. The
virus infects the world very quickly, with cases in Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. The number of infections reached 8 million on the 12th day.
Mankind fell into panic, confusion and despair. At this time, roles representing different industries and functions of mankind have appeared one after another.
The staff of the Plague Reporting Center traced the trajectory of Beth, the first deceased, and found that Beth had also been to Chicago before returning to Minneapolis. Then Beth's ex-boyfriend Jon was diagnosed with infection.
Faced with Beth’s husband Mickey’s inquiry, Mills couldn’t tell the truth that Beth had cheated and couldn’t bear to beat the man who had lost his wife and stepson.
Here is the sadness and helplessness of the small family, and the other side is the panic of the whole world. After the spread of the infectious disease, a large number of people died in batches. People were pinning their hopes on vaccines, but the virus research was still in its infancy. Victory was far away, and even the body bags were used up.
Ordinary people can hide, isolate themselves at home and choose to escape. But medical staff like Mills didn't have many choices, she could only go to the front line. Even if she later found out that she was infected, the first thing she thought of was to check the people she had been in contact with, isolate the places she had been, and try to minimize the scope of infection. This is her professional belief.
Even at the last moment, Mills was wearing a breathing mask in the makeshift hospital isolation area, and she tried her best to put down jackets on people who felt cold.
Another healer, Sussman, is a lone fighter who has made great contributions to the development of a vaccine. Because the virus is so terrible, the government has ordered that research can only be carried out in a biosafety level 4 laboratory. The third-level biosafety laboratory where Dr.
Sassman is located needs to destroy all existing things to avoid more serious consequences such as virus leakage.
Dr. Sussman has gone through an inner struggle, risking his life and secretly carrying out high-risk virus breeding. Fortunately, he succeeded in the end, grabbing precious time from the hands of death.
But the vaccine is successfully developed and the vaccine is put into use, between the twoThe time span is very long. The more difficult question is that with the number of people infected worldwide, who is eligible to use the first batch of vaccines produced?
Doomsday lottery
People discussed and decided to use lottery to determine who has the priority to use vaccines. This is a helplessly fair move, and people have no choice. The
lottery is the date. If your birthday happens to be the date obtained by lottery, congratulations on your right to use the vaccine. You will be able to produce antibodies and no longer be under the shadow of the virus.
In the movie "Infectious Diseases", the vaccine does not need to be injected, and it can be successfully used by spraying directly on the mouth and nose. This kind of life-saving miracle medicine is naturally a rush. Ordinary people can only stay at home, holding the remote control and praying hard, hoping that the next date is their birthday, but some people can easily get the vaccine.
CDC director Kiefer did not participate in the lottery. His leadership directly gave him two vaccines for Kiefer and his wife to use.
Kiefer readily accepted this shortcut, but the director's skill in character creation is quite deep.
A second ago, Kiefer was still eating the benefits of his job, trampling on the negative image of fairness. With the development of the plot, Kiefer gave his vaccine to the grandson of the cleaner. The kindness and complexity of human beings are highlighted at this moment.
However, the end is coming, not all people can maintain the kindness in their hearts. The
infectious disease can bring panic, and there are not a few people who use panic to make a fortune. This is the case with Allen, who has 12 million online fans.
He lied that he was already in a fever, took a slice of forsythia in front of the camera, and said that if he did not die the next day, the forsythia would prove effective.
It was obvious that he would certainly not die the next day, because he was not infected at all.
But he caused a large number of people to flock to the pharmacy and berserk forsythia. Those who couldn't get it became angry and attacked the doctor in the pharmacy, snatched the medicine from others, and smashed the pharmacy directly. The already exhausted world has become more chaotic.
and Allen, the initiator of this chaos, made a profit of 4.5 million dollars. What is even more sad is that the looting caused many uninfected people to crowd in the crowd and eventually become infected.
For the vaccine, people robbed and took hostages in exchange for a chance to survive. The tragedy expands infinitely.
Fortunately, the director left a glimmer of hope at the end. In the first patient, Beth's husband Mickey and his daughter were not infected, and antibodies naturally existed in Mickey's body. Although medical methods cannot produce serum from Mickey's blood, based on the setting of the group image movie, we can know that in the world view of "Infectious Diseases", there will be many people who have antibodies like Mickey.
Conclusion
At the end of the film, the director made a symbolic reveal to tell the audience where the virus originated.
turned out to be a logging company that over-logged and occupied the original habitat of bats. The bats flew to a pigpen, dropped their feces, and were misled by the pig.
The infected pig spread the virus to the chef, and the chef infected Beth, and then spread the world.
Amazingly, Beth is from the logging company that destroyed the bat habitat.
So far, what the film wants to say is very clear. If you don't respect nature, humans will suffer the catastrophe of natural feedback.
