Gattaca (1997)

I was told to watch this movie a very, very long time ago by a friend of mine who doesn’t like this genre; so my interest was always piqued when it came to this film, but it seems I hadn’t gotten around to watching it until now.

Gattaca is set in the near future where genetics defines your life; although natural conception is still in effect, very few people choose to have their children that way, they choose, instead, to design them as perfect beings before they’re even implanted into the womb. The film follows the life of Vincent (Ethan Hawke), a “God child” (natural conception) who has big dreams of going into space. However, because he isn’t genetically designed to be perfect, neither his skills nor his ambition allow him to fulfill his dream; he needs the genes for it. In order to live his dream, he buys an identity of a superior human, Jerome (Jude Law) and uses Jerome’s genes and his own skills to gain access into Gattaca, the primary space exploration program in the world. However, as soon as he achieves his goal of gaining a place in the next launch to Titan, his program director is killed and an investigation begins that puts Vincent’s (and Jerome’s) lives and dreams in jeopardy.

Now, I won’t lie, it took me a little time to get into the film. I adore science fiction, I pretty much live and breathe the stuff in films and literature, but for me this film took a while to get a good pace. That’s not to say that the characters were boring or the storyline was unbelievable (for all its futurism, the story is incredibly realistic), but more that because of the amount of exposition that all the characters needed, the film started off rather slowly. Don’t let that stop you if you’re thinking of watching the film, believe me.

As previously mentioned, the storyline is incredibly realistic. Because Vincent is essentially living the life of someone else’s body, he has to take extreme measures to keep his own genes contained. This isn’t easy, considering how much dead skin and hair and saliva we shed and spread daily without knowing we do. The process he goes through to “purify” himself isn’t a ridiculous and over-the-top futuristic thing; I think because of this it becomes a much more powerful story. Sure, he wears blood-filled fingertips for identity checks and has specialized contact lenses for both color and vision, but he doesn’t become superhuman; he doesn’t become Jerome more than he physically can.

Jerome, as well, is a very believable character, and a rather sympathetic one. He’s the perfect human, with perfect vision and perfect life expectancy. But given all that, he has never come first in anything he’s tried. Perhaps it was because of this that he first attempted suicide by stepping in front of a speeding car, but all he succeeded in doing was paralyzing himself from the waist down and putting his body up for “rent” for people like Vincent to use. As he says in a moment of cynicism, “I couldn’t even do that right, could I?” The one thing that honestly bothered me in this film was that no one seemed to notice that Jerome and Vincent looked nothing alike… people just seemed to take it into stride that the two were the exact same person and every so often it had me wrinkling my brow in disbelief.

However, the juxtaposition in this story of the perfectly built human being imperfect in his life and the imperfectly build human being all that he can be in his, is a very fascinating aspect explored in Gattaca, and it’s done brilliantly. I won’t deny that this film reminded me a little too much of Brave New World (the book, I have yet to see a film adaptation and I don’t particularly strive to) but it took a slightly less dystopian branch of the same idea. That being said, if we ever evolve enough to be able to design perfect humans I will be thoroughly terrified of our world.

One more thing I have to mention before I sum up the review, is the music. The soundtrack was composed and arranged by Michael Nyman and it is beautiful. I will openly admit that the final sequence of this film completely captivated me due to its incredible soundtrack and phenomenal acting. It’s slightly reminiscent of Meet Joe Black in parts, but it’s still a fantastic score that I will actively seek out.

Final opinion? A very good film of its genre, and one that I would recommend to people who aren’t yet huge fans of science fiction. It has just enough of a spacey element to be both believable and fantastical, and the characters are wonderfully human in who and how they are. This gets a 7/10 from me, and I would gladly watch it again.

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