Gattaca shows a world where you are genetically designed to succeed, unless you’re not genetically designed.
By Genna Patterson
Gattaca hails back to 1997, and yet its message is not far from where we are now scientifically with In Vitro Fertilisation and stem cell growth research. The movie was made around the same time that Dolly the sheep clone was big news, and the possibilities of genetic designing seemed like an innate future for us all.
Ethan Hawke stars as the ironically named Vincent Freeman – because he is trapped by his own genetics.
He is an ‘invalid’, a child conceived naturally without the normal genetically designed pre-implantation, where parents can have their best eggs and sperm selected to make the best possible child. Vincent is short sighted, has a heart defect and an expected life expectancy of 30.2 years. By being born ‘in-valid’, he is predetermined to belong in a lower social class.
Vincent has dreams of being an astronaut when he works at Gattaca, a space program centre, but as a cleaner. He realises that he will only get to live his dreams if he can find a ‘borrowed ladder’ – a ‘valid’ willing to lend him his identity for a price. Enter Jerome Eugene Morrow (Jude Law), a former swimming star with a DNA second to none.
Jerome is paralysed from the waist down after a car accident, and so Vincent agrees to become Jerome.
Vincent undergoes excruciating leg extentions among other things, and must scrub his body of skin and hair cells meticulously in order to pass the daily tests on his way into Gattaca – having passed the interview by a simple blood test (borrowed from Jerome). He uses Jerome’s blood, urine and skin cells and soon he is Gattaca’s top celestial navigator and selected for a manned mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.
When all seems well, and Vincent is finally getting where he wants to be, a Gattaca boss is murdered and the only DNA they can find that shouldn’t be there is Vincent’s. The cops show up, as does Vincent’s brother, who he hasn’t seem in years. Will the cops figure out that Vincent is a fake? Will he get to go on the space mission? Will the girl he likes, Irene (Uma Thurman), accept him for who he really is? This film asks bigger questions than those.
Directed by Andrew Niccol of The Truman Show, In Time and Lord of War, Gattaca is a glimpse into a not altogether brighter future that Eugenics research is hoping for. For if we are ‘perfect’, what is there left to achieve?
Gattaca, which also stars Gore Vidal, Jayne Brook and Xander Berkeley, shows us a world that is possible if not probable, where societies divide not because of class, education or upbringing, but because of biology. Whatever the reason, societies divide nonetheless, but do we risk outbreeding ourselves as we are now?
Vincent is the ultimate hero; not only does he overcome societies prejudices, but he overcomes his beliefs that he is destined for a small life, and above all, he overcomes genetics.
A man who will risk it all to live his dream is a hero indeed.
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