Subject: Review: Gattaca (1997)

From: [email-masked] (Mark R Leeper)
Date: 28 Oct 1997 00:02:32 GMT

GATTACA
                    A film review by Mark R. Leeper

               Capsule: GATTACA is a cold film that
          frequently stretches credibility, but still it
          stands as one of the more intelligent science
          fiction films of the 90s.  Anatomy truly is destiny
          in a world where almost everything about you can be
          determined quickly from a DNA sample.  One man with
          a dream of traveling in space carries out a long
          identity deception in a world where it should be
          impossible, by using another man's DNA to fool all
          the detectors.  This is also a philosophical
          detective story a well as a science fiction film
          that looks deeply at the implications of too much
          genetic knowledge.  Rating: +2 (-4 to +4), 8 (0 to
          10)

     While some pairs of identical twins lead surprisingly similar
lives, frequently they do not and frequently they show different
interests and potential.  So there are limitations on the information
about the adult that can be augured by a DNA examination.  That makes
it seem to be unlikely that we would ever get to the world as it is
shown in GATTACA where everything anyone wants to know about you is
encoded into your DNA.  However, GATTACA assumes that the world has
decided that DNA is the most reliable way of judging a person in spite
of counter-examples like Vincent (played by Ethan Hawke) the main
character of this story.  Vincent has been delegated to the labor class
based on his DNA.  He looks wistfully at the rockets blasting off from
the Gattaca Corporation and dreams of going off into space.  He is
highly motivated, but nobody notices because his DNA says that he just
does not have the potential to be much more than a floor sweeper,
permanently a part of the under-class.  One wonders how so inaccuratea
test could be accepted without question by a society, particularly
after age of civil rights and civil liberties advances.

     Vincent knows he does not have a chance of being chosen by the
Gattaca Corporation for one of their probes into space, so he decides
to literally reinvent himself.  There is a criminal element who are
willing to match him up with a human with a much better DNA structure
who can supply him with hairs, urine samples, blood samples and any
other kind of sample so that all the samples that Gattaca takes from
him will really be from Jerome (Jude Law).  Jerome agrees to live with
Vincent, providing him with sufficient biological specimens to give to
the company and letting Vincent take on Jerome's name.  This is a
tricky process involving things like false finger tips filled with
Jerome's blood form the ID machine that takes a sample.  We see how
Vincent is occasionally able to substitute Jerome's specimens for his
own, but it is never really convincing that he could do that whenever
the need arises.  Vincent romances a fellow employee Irene Cassini (Uma
Thurman) who gets pulled into this web of deception.

     The story moves at a languorous pace showing how the world has
changed since the conversion to the DNA standard.  Andrew M. Niccol who
wrote and directed has given us a "not too distant future" that is not
entirely convincing, but is still worth seeing.  Loose ends abound, but
that may be part of the point.  For example, Vincent has taken over for
Jerome and is telling the world that he is the same person, but Jerome
has a "toffee-nosed" British accent and so presumably comes from an
environment that would produce such an accent.  Vincent does not havea
British accent at all.  Yet nobody seems to even care to compare
Vincent to his claimed background. It is hard to place how far this
world is in the future.  Women and men at Gattaca dress in almost
identical uniforms and women wear their hair in almost masculine
styles.  Cars make the whining sound of turbines, but still look a lot
like the cars of today.

     The photography by Slawomir Idziak is just a bit showy, bathing
some scenes in yellow or blue light. Particularly in the first half of
the film it is often his camerawork that creates the mood in scenes
devoid of any music.  It gives the world a repressive, sterile, dry
feel.  Michael Nyman's score when it does kick in is repetitive almost
to the point of being minimalist.

     GATTACA has a few places where it could have had the details
better developed, but it is a complex story, perhaps of the complexity
of a novel.  It is told without the too common problems of science
fiction of too much special effects replacing careful thought.  If
anything, GATTACA is a film that substitutes intelligence for
explosions.  This is about people caught up in a sort of cautionary
dystopic world.  It may not be a likely world, but it has well-
developed character in this world.  Overall I would rate GATTACA a +2
on the -4 to +4 scale.

					Mark R. Leeper
					[email-masked]
					Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper