I showed this to Cathy. I thought we had both watched it the first time I saw it, but I was mistaken.
It’s such an unusual movie. I can’t think of another that plays anything like it. The movie centers around the virus, but it swirls around the world, following a variety of players, most of whom interact in some way at some point, but their stories paint a larger picture of how the world reacts to a problem that takes time to work out. There are riots, looting, personal attacks. There’s the opportunity to exploit hope for a cure.
This time through, I felt like the movie was more bleak than I remember. I think their eventual discovery of a vaccine was a big step toward making it feel like a happy ending, but there are so many dark things that happen. The amoral crackpot blogger goes free. The well-meaning CDC director winds up under investigation for advising his wife to get to a safe location before martial law. What really weighs on me more is the way that the rioting goes down. With the number of people dead, it raises a question about how likely it is that the nation would be able to get back to normal. Plus, since everything seems to have been shut down for a long time, I imagine the economy would be destroyed.
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