'Outbreak' sweeping cinema screens with virus scare

By Dini S. Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): Schadenfreude: it's a German phrase meaning "joy at the suffering of others." It may not be the intention of the moviemakers, but Outbreak, a new film depicting a deadly epidemic, not unlike the Ebola scourge currently ravaging Zaire, is undoubtedly cashing in on mainstream media's new nemesis: the pestilent virus.

Cinema is an unparalleled documenter of the times we live in, yet so many contemporary films slumber in the realm of fantasy. If invaders from outer space were only exposed to films and television shows, they would conclude that people on earth were either CIA or KGB agents, cops and criminals, Vietnam veterans, or overpaid lawyers.

Seldom does a film tap into the anxieties of the average moviegoer. Prophesy is an even more rare accomplishment. If the release of Outbreak had not preceded the Ebola crisis, audiences may dismiss it for what it is: a generic Hollywood thriller with a corny love-story subplot. Instead, by being a safe depiction of a real-life catastrophe, Outbreak has achieved iconic status. Without context, Outbreak would be without viewers.

Why? The cast is the first indication. Dustin Hoffman is the heroic Army doctor Sam Daniels, whose ex-wife Robby (Renee Russo) holds a civilian version of his job. Former model Russo (Lethal Weapon 3, In the Line of Fire) stands tall as she repeats her past roles as a beautiful woman holding unlikely jobs: a cop, a CIA agent, and now a virus scientist. Both attempt to fill their roles convincingly, but their superficial differences are only enhanced by their uneasy chemistry.

Russo, however, is a great actress in supermodel guise. Director Wolfgang Petersen remarked that he wanted someone "vulnerable, honest, and warm". Russo is all this, and her intelligence reveals itself through (or despite) her prominent cheekbones.

Hoffman, on the other hand, was supposedly chosen because Petersen needed an "unlikely hero," someone the audience feels may not emerge victorious. Hoffman has played losers successfully in past films (Midnight Cowboy, Papillon), and his charm does lie in his intense ordinariness. But a failed hero and an unhappy ending in a big-budget Hollywood film? In a genre where even Danny De Vito may end up with fame, fortune and an Amazonian blonde? Now THAT is truly unlikely.

So, Hoffman strides tough in his army gear from the depths of Zaire, where the fictional Motaba virus originated, to the small Californian town of Cedar Creek, where Motaba is decimating the population. The events evolve as rapidly as a mutating virus in action, and pretty soon the airborne disease is threatening not only ignorant folk but also the medical community. Shriek! First it was communism, then AIDS and terrorism, and now Motaba! What terror must Americans battle next? It's all a bit like The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, but with more sophisticated jargon.

Petersen's past works include the Academy Award foreign film nominee Das Boot and the post-modernist In the Line of Fire. Outbreak demonstrates not only Petersen's claustrophobic directorial style, fluid camera-work and razor-sharp editing breathlessly takes the audience from scene to scene.

Furthermore, the believable script, written by physician Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool, contains some great one- liners, many of them delivered by comic relief Major Casey, played by Kevin Spacey. Stylistically, Outbreak is gripping fare.

Outbreak also imparts an intelligence and social consciousness often lacking in other thrillers. The film's exploration of explosive issues is exhausting. First, the morality of biological-weapons development is brought forth, particularly the lack of transparency and abuse of power involved in the process. At times, the film boils down to one theme: disaffection with military authority, who refer to virus victims as "casualties of war." Here the privilege of being evil is given to the always- excellent Donald Sutherland (Klute, JFK, Disclosure).

Green movement

Other causes are taken up throughout the film. One scene plays on the AIDS analogy. Hoffman takes off his helmet to have physical contact with Russo -- risking death but giving her the compassion which virus patients need but often lack. By then the film has been reduced to sentimental pulp and Russo to a damsel- in-distress, but the gesture is admirable.

Most importantly, however, Outbreak joins the Green movement and decries the plunder of nature by greedy humans. After all, if the infected monkey had not been smuggled out of Africa, Americans would just watch African casualties on the news and not worry about an epidemic in their own backyard.

Herein lies the tragedy. Few cared about AIDS when it was an African and homosexual disease. Fewer still care about Ebola, even though its existence dates back to 1976, when it killed 400 people in Zaire and Sudan. Consider the statistics: doctors and nurses, lacking in gloves and other medical equipment, comprised two-thirds of Ebola victims at Kikwit Hospital; and Japan can only offer financial help because there are no Japanese experts on Ebola. Would the Japanese, or any other non-afflicted nation, revert its policy if the disease arrived on its shores?

No doubt the cure for AIDS, or Ebola, will not be as easily stumbled upon as in a Hollywood film. Yet the potential of technology exists: a man on the moon is the most obvious testimony. Political will is crucial.

It is this issue of North-South division which Outbreak neglects. The media has picked up on the Ebola scare because of its plague-like potential. Yet a Newsweek article declared that, "Ebola is ill equipped to go global, and humanity is well- equipped to stop it" -- referring to infection-control measures such as wearing gloves, gowns, and masks. Humanity in affluent nations, that is, not those in impoverished, developing countries.

The film also mysteriously glosses over the racial issue. Outbreak gives hot young actor Cuba Gooding Jr. (Boyz in the Hood), along with Morgan Freeman, the distinction being an African-American actor playing a major role, in a major motion picture. When Gooding's character, Major Salt, arrives in Zaire to find a dying village, his eyes fill with terror. Is his panic related to sentiments of Pan-Africanism? The film doesn't say. Similarly, Morgan Freeman's character, General Ford, seems to feel no particular remorse at African deaths due to the virus. Either this is a leveling American patriotism at work, or the producers could not risk attracting a racial controversy. That kind of media attention would be damaging at the box office.