Gattaca
Columbia Pictures, 1997
Directed by Andrew Niccol
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The makers of Gattaca have seen the future, and it's not pretty. Writer/director Andrew Niccol shows us a world where DNA science rules our lives to a disturbing extent. The scary part: none of it seems at all far fetched.
Niccol imagines a day when a baby's lifespan and cause of death can be predicted at the moment of birth. A day when it becomes common-place for expecting parents, who can afford it, to have their embryos taken to a geneticist for a tune-up. The result: a new society where discrimination is based not on skin color or ethnic type, but on the supposed quality of your genes. In the world of Gattaca, people are expected to live up to their potential. No one can exceed their potential, explains one scientist in the film, if they do, then their potential was not properly calculated.
Sadly, our hero, Vincent (Ethan Hawke), was born the old fashioned way and his potential is seen as low. His fate is apparently sealed when a delivery room DNA test showed he was destined to die at 30 from heart disease. His dream of being an astronaut seems out of reach. But Vincent doesn't give up. He exercises his body and his mind, determined to achieve what genetic science failed to give him. But he has to go one step further: he rents the DNA (i.e. blood and urine) of a genetically engineered swimming champion who was paralyzed in a car accident. Only then, can he enter the elite society of the enclosed world known as Gattaca.
His plan seems to be working perfectly and Vincent, now known as Jerome, is just days away from a mission to the moons of Saturn when everything is threatened. A murder inside Gattaca puts every molecule of DNA under scrutiny. Vincent's imperfect eyelash is found near the crime scene -- and his true identity is in jeopardy of being revealed. (Ironically, this movie was made before anyone put a certain blue dress under a microscope.) Vincent must elude the genetic inspections any way he can and his predicament makes up the riveting body of the film.
Hawke has the perfect mix of vulnerability, strength and intelligence required for the role. Uma Thurman, who for me has always embodied the beauty of imperfection, plays his genetically-engineered-but-somehow-flawed, love interest. Jude Law and Alan Arkin are also superb in supporting roles. Look for cameos by Gore Vidal and Academy Award Winner Ernest Borgnine, among others.
Working on a low budget, the production smartly saves on expensive sets by shooting inside a futuristic Frank Lloyd Wright civic center in Northern California. The director takes good advantage of Wright's antiseptic architecture while also borrowing bits and pieces from classics of the genre such as Brave New World, THX-1138 and Alphaville. Niccol combines these elements with a very literate script to create a fully realized, unique, vision of the future.
Before making Gattaca, the director also wrote the script for the more widely seen Jim Carrey film, The Truman Show. Gattaca shares that film's central message: we can break beyond the limits placed upon us by society -- our potential is unlimited. In this film the lead character is imprisoned not by a phony soundstage world, but by his own DNA. But both films aim to show that man can be more than the sum of his parts. Both films also use the image of a man striving to push through the waves to the horizon as a metaphor for the message that we are only free when we realize anything is possible.
(c) Copyright 1998