What would happen if a deadly virus struck a major European city? How would people live when fear replaces hope? Supposing the infected area was cordoned off? How long would it take for law and order to break down? And for the rest of the world to stop caring about those trapped inside? What if the medical research that promises to save us is in fact a double edged sword? There are lots of interesting questions brought to mind by Belgian drama 'Cordon'; unfortunately, almost too many. Just the practical issues - for example, how would the laboratory responsible for managing the disease cope? or how might one group of people attempt to survive without getting infected? are themselves extremely complex, and we get, not a single story, but an account told from many perspectives, attempting to cover all sides of the story, but actually only drawing attention to the host of issues not addressed. Part of the problem here is that big stories are often rendered accessible by being personalised - but a story of the very end of society itself is just too large to be told by example. Who, for example, is Lommers, the senior politician seemingly with sole responsibility for condemning thousands of her own citizens to death, and treating it as a normal administrative detail? I wanted to like this and some of the psychological subplots were convincing - but as a whole, it felt contrived. One might think of Polanski's 'The Pianist', or Swedish AIDS drama 'Don't Ever Wipe Tears without Gloves' as stories that touched upon similar themes, but based on true stories and without the surfeit of ambition that ultimately renders 'Cordon' unsatisfactory.
