Specialists Without Spirit

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2011 film Contagion saw a second reception. It was 2020, and a newly quarantined viewership experienced Contagion as if gazing into a forgotten scrying glass: the film quickly became one of the most streamed titles in the United States. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Contagion narrates the emergence of a novel pathogen in China and its spread throughout the world as it infects and kills millions, inciting panic, crime, grift and misery.