Marc Forster
World War Z

There's no need to read Jared Diamond to consider that "diseases" are one of the main reasons behind the history and evolution of humankind: the main example could be the encounter between Indo-European populations and Native Americans. "Pandemics" like the Black Death in the 1300s killed a third of the continent's population in Europe alone and in just five years; the Spanish flu between 1918 and 1920 killed tens of millions of people worldwide. Those of my generation grew up with the paranoia of AIDS. Then there were mad cow disease, avian flu, SARS, swine flu... But beyond the dramatic or "paranoid" aspects, the subject is even fascinating: our biological system is a true ecosystem where organic alterations result in genetic mutations transmitted hereditarily with peculiar characteristics depending on the cases. Personally (but this is just an example), I suffer from "thalassemia minor" or also known as "Mediterranean anemia": a hereditary blood disease that (in short) can lead to clinical conditions with (unfortunately) even severe variable outcomes. A genetic mutation widespread among Mediterranean peoples as a degree of protection against malaria, and is practically defined as "selective survival advantage."

Essentially, all this is connected to the only topic of interest in "World War Z," a 2013 film directed by Marc Forster and based on a 2016 epistolary novel by Max Brooks. The film focuses on the events of Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), a United Nations investigator who, following the global spread of a pandemic that turns humans into zombies, searches for a remedy to the epidemic and in particular for what is considered the "patient zero" (I suggest on the same topic, but without horrific deviations, the film "Contagion" by Steven Soderbergh). His research results in vain, but his intuition based on the fact that zombies, who are at all effects subjects infected by a virus, refuse to attack subjects suffering from another type of viral disease, eventually proves to be the solution to the international crisis.

For the rest, "World War Z" offers no points of interest: the "zombie" element (furthermore, lacking the "splatter" that gives meaning to their existence) places the film in an ambiguous intermediate position between horror and apocalyptic science fiction. Even the scenes that should be more impressive, like the "human pyramid" at the gates of Jerusalem, leave the viewer indifferent. Except for two or three "images": 1. The renegade CIA agent narrating how the North Koreans "solved" the epidemic in a few hours by extracting the teeth of the entire population; 2. The protagonist's reaction to the building of the walls around Jerusalem: "Doesn't surprise me: they've been building walls for two thousand years"; 3. The suggestive and unsettling theory of the Mossad's tenth man: "If nine of us read an information and reach the same conclusion, it's the duty of the tenth man to dissent. No matter how improbable it might seem, the tenth man must investigate with the presumption that the other nine are wrong."