Plausibility in storytelling

Contagion is currently in movie theaters (written by Scott Z. Burns, directed by Steven Soderberg) and it’s an excellent movie. One of its most impressive aspects is how the filmmakers really strove to make the story plausible. Based on articles I’ve read from the science community, they do a pretty good job. Here’s a background piece from the NYT:

When Hollywood turns to medicine, accuracy generally heads for the hills. But the creators of the new action thriller “Contagion” went to unprecedented lengths to fact-check their story of a destructive viral pandemic, retaining a panel of nationally renowned virologists and epidemiologists as consultants. The intent was to infuse the usual hyperbole with an extra frisson: This is the way it could really happen. Be very afraid.

You have to applaud the effort, for the movie does indeed offer a procession of dead-on accurate scenes that not only could happen but, in many cases, have already happened. Still, the whole thing is an improbable caricature, with 100 action-packed Hollywood minutes veering far from reality. You can still be very afraid if you want, if a contagious apocalypse happens to be your thing. But it’s not going to happen this way.

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What follows is a series of gruesome worst-case scenarios, crumpling together every conceivable social and ethical complication of epidemi disease, for what boils down to a giant in-your-face public-service advertisement for the world’s beleaguered health agencies.

The medical details, including the rapid demise of several excellent actors (after some highly unrealistic foaming at the mouth) are the least of it.

But even with that commitment to the ‘truth,’ the movie could not convey one dynamic that happens in real life:

The real horror of most disease is that it all moves so slowly, leaving everyone involved all too much time to think. The worse the illness, the more time seems to drag.

And that is not only for relatives sitting in waiting rooms. At every medical ground zero, doctors and nurses pace and dither and second-guess themselves, waiting for tests to be done and results to dribble back, cursing when the IV falls out and struggling forever to put it back in, counting days and doses, watching trends. Patients do nothing but wait for the next footfall outside their door. Waiting is where much of the real drama of contagion lies. But you cannot make a movie out of that.

This is the ever present challenge for filmmakers: To achieve a sense of verisimilitude. The film has to give the appearance of being real. And yet there are some aspects of reality — like the simple fact of waiting — which simply aren’t cinematic.

Nevertheless Contagion does its own version of waiting. Instead of the usual Hollywood approach to science-based action thrillers — heads exploding and general chaos by the end of Act One — this film does a methodical, calculated escalation in the plot which underscores that sense of realty about how a contagious disease would actually grow in scope.

Takeaway: Whatever script you write, especially ones involving science or medicine, you have to make sure key events in the plot feel plausible and pass the verisimilitude test.

For more of the NYT article, go here.

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