Viking Night: Gattaca
By Bruce Hall
January 24, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Or...do we?
What if I were to describe a future world so sterile, ordered, shiny and perfect that Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman are considered second class citizens and it sucks to be Jude Law? Believe me, if it ever sucks to be Jude Law, everyone else's life just got a whole lot worse by default. Lucky for us, it's only in certain high concept sci-fi movies that to be born impossibly attractive and talented is pretty much the same thing as being a crack baby. But that's not the first thing you'll wonder about when you watch Gattaca. First, you'll spend a few minutes digging around in your head, trying to remember where you've seen it before.
This is the kind of film that just had to have been based on some obscure pulp novel written by one of those brilliantly tragic 20th Century cats who died penniless and face down in a glass of whiskey because even his mother hated him. Gattaca sports a slick, retro-noir universe filled with Truman era hairstyles and pin striped double breasted suits. Every building looks like it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. All the cars have big fat fenders and nice round windshields. When people speak, they converse in the curt, ironic tones your grandparents might have used, had they been comic book characters instead of people. But this world is actually not the product of a forgotten Heinlein novella, but from the mind of first time writer/director Andrew Niccol.
If only we could all be this good at something we try for the first time. There's even a running voice over, which would normally be corny. But Gattaca has a lot of interesting and relevant things to say, and it does them well enough that soon it seems natural to do so using a plot device straight out of a Humphrey Bogart film. You'll have forgotten all about it ten minutes in. Which is about the time you find out just what kind of world this is going to be and sure enough, it's one where even Jude Law would eventually pray for death.
Ethan Hawke is Vincent Freeman (remember that no character is ever named "Freeman" without an obvious reason), a man unfortunate enough to have been born on the cusp of the genetic revolution. You know all that crazy talk about how you'll one day be able to design your own children as easily as picking out upholstery on your new Toyota? Well, that day is here, but Vincent's parents decided to save a buck and conceive a child the old fashioned way. What they get is a bouncing baby boy, genetically predestined to die of heart failure at 30. That's hard news to handle as new parents, not to mention an irresistible weapon to save for those difficult teen years:
"Shut up, Mom! I hate you and I'll stay out as late as I want!"
"Oh yeah? Well I know when you're gonna die, so do your damn homework before I tell you!"
The mind reels. Anyway, Vincent's parents learn from their mistake and have their next child the "natural" way. Anton Freeman is born with movie star good looks, livestock strength and an IQ two percent higher than his genetically perfect body weight at all times or your money back. This leads to some genetically influenced sibling rivalry, particularly when it comes time to go to college, which Anton does. Vincent meanwhile, gets to do what all genetically "inferior" people like him do for a living, which is clean toilets with Ernest Borgnine. If that seems preposterous to you, then you've never tried to get health insurance with a pre-existing condition, and you've never seen The Dirty Dozen, where Borgnine absolutely kills it.
Gattaca makes its point pretty clear, pretty early on. In a world where your level of design means more than your level of skill, it's a hard life for anyone who wants to depend on the latter. Intellectually, Vincent is as brilliant as anyone. It's his DNA that's the problem. The rest of the film involves what he intends to do about it.
Vincent's dream is to be an astronaut. And his toilet cleaning gig happens to be at Gattaca - a sort of future NASA where incredibly attractive graduate students are shot into space wearing business suits and hair pomade for no obvious reason. There is an elaborate security apparatus there, meaning the genetically perfect employees are asked to prove that perfection on a daily basis. They are run through an endless and incredibly invasive regimen of poking, prodding, scanning and testing that quite honestly, isn't much different from what happens to REAL astronauts. I suppose the primary difference is that at NASA, the list of available job options is probably more comprehensive than "fly rockets" or "shovel shit".
But in the movies, allegory > reality, so let's just continue.
Luckily for Vincent, there are solutions for people with this kind of problem. It seems that whenever a member of the Master Race falls on hard times his identity can be bought, for a price. Enter Jerome Morrow, who even isn't just a flawless man, but a perfect ten turned up to eleven. He's fit, brilliant, handsome, witty, and he looks like Jude Law. The problem is, Jerome was a champion athlete who became depressed after winning a mere silver medal in the Olympics, So depressed in fact, that he unsuccessfully attempted suicide, rendering himself a paraplegic. That's right - in a future where every swimmer is Michael Phelps, second place just makes you the First Loser. Now, you'd think that in a world like this, being a half paralyzed Superman tops being Jimmy Olsen, but apparently not.
So, the two men develop an cunning plan to switch places, allowing Vincent to get into Gattaca and live out his dream while Jerome sits at home drinking his sorrows away. All they have to do is collect an endless sample of urine, blood, skin, hair and saliva specimens, record Jerome's heart beat each morning, commit themselves to utter secrecy and carry out a grueling, clockwork series of daily rituals designed to pull the whole thing off long enough for Vincent to get himself into space. There's simply no way anything could go wrong - unless of course, Vincent were to...I don't know...fall in love with Uma Thurman or something. And you know how Uma Thurman is, always ruining things with her...prettiness...and stuff.
Yes, at Gattaca Vincent discovers a kindred spirit in Irene, a fellow astronaut who finds herself relegated to flying scrub missions because she's only "mostly" perfect. But in contrast with Jerome, Irene takes being 99% fantastic like a champ, bravely wandering the halls of Gattaca a sullen, withdrawn, tall and pretty temptress. She and Vincent start dating, and it seems like everything's coming up roses. But when an unforeseen event threatens to unravel Vincent's plans, he suddenly must choose between chasing his dream or following his heart, even as his past returns to haunt him in unexpected ways.
From Columbia Pictures...the inspiring, not entirely true story of one man who refused to let fate rule his destiny...
Sorry. Got carried away. I know that on paper, Gattaca sounds a little pedestrian and even - depending on how well read you are - slightly derivative. But there's far more depth to this film than I can reveal without spoiling the story and while at times the narrative ice sheet gets thin, nobody ever actually falls though. Gattaca is in my opinion a terrific film - part neo-noir thriller and part sci-fi masterpiece, with just enough Melrose Place thrown in to keep almost anyone riveted for an hour and a half. What's perhaps more important is that it handles a very real subject with such surprising grace, you'll hardly notice the handful of moments when it flirts with self parody.
If nothing else, Gattaca certainly can at least teach us two things. One, be glad you live in the world you do, instead of one where you have to be smarter than Steve Jobs and prettier than Ryan Seacrest just to stock shelves at Best Buy. And two, if you ever win a silver medal in the Olympics, living with the soul crushing shame is a whole lot less humiliating than spending the first six hours of every day peeing into plastic bags and scraping off the first four payers of your skin just so Ethan Hawke can walk around pretending he's better than you.