In Continuum.

Gattaca



There are some movies that i am just not fated to watch. You know, once you miss it in the theaters due to one reason or another, you tell yourself that cable television is the greatest invention in the world, and that as long as you get to watch it on cable a couple of months later, then it is okay. Another reason why one might not be fated to watch a certain film might be because of immaturity. Well, at least that was the case for me when Gattaca was in the theaters. I was in Primary Five and probably didn't have enough brain capacity to absorb anything more sophisticated than say, Toy Story. Even if i actually understood the basic plot of the movie, i wouldn't have understood the beautifully crafted storyline and screenplay, the cinematography and most of all, the issues involved in the movie and so much more. I might not even have liked the movie if i watched it there and then. So in a way, i am glad that i wasn't fated to watch it back then, or anytime close to the release date.

Ten years later, Star Movies actually showed that movie again, but for some reason i didn't get pass the opening credits. So i vowed to get it on DVD after raving reviews from the internet as well as my beau (Who watched it three times). And finally, after sitting through it in the comfort of my own home, at my own free time and absolute concentration, there is only one thing i can say about this movie: Fucking brilliant.

Gattaca tells of the story of Vincent, an In-valid or a genetic outcaste, craving for an opportunity to fly into space simply because of a passion he dared to dream. But because at birth, this fictional society that exists in the not-so-distant future, like all the other God-child, or naturally conceived child, he was examined immediately and told of his heart defects. The fact that he had flaws made him invalid for any space missions, no matter how brilliant his examination results might be, or how well his physical built is. Because of his heart problem known at birth and his precise date of death, the dream of flying into outer space was strictly out of his league.

However, there was a way to get around the system. And that is, to fake an identity right down to the blood on your fingertips, the urine samples and the eye colour. Jude Law's character Jerome Morrow was a great swimmer before his car accident, and throughout his life he never attained anything more than a silver award at competitions. Now that he was paralyzed, he lent Vincent his identity by giving him his blood, his urine samples and even contact lenses to mimic the colour of his own eyes, to allow him to have a chance to get into the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation. So initially, the janitor who Vincent was, became an elite in Gattaca and slowly climbed up the ladder to become an official navigator under a false identity.

But his dreams to fly to Titan was utterly shattered when a murder of the mission commander happened in the vicinity of the facility, and Vincent became the prime suspect of it all. Throughout the movie, it has a lot of cat and mouse chase to track down Vincent, this so-called In-valid who really is Jerome at that time. A brilliant all-round performance from the cast and the crew.

At first look, Gattaca would already seem like a carefully crafted film. Every single shot was carefully calibrated and designed. The camera-work in this movie too, took on a soft touch to the settings and the characters. There are other very subtle ideas pouring out at the audience that raised an eyebrow for me when i read the trivia over at IMDB.com. For example, the spiral staircase in Vincent's home was made to mimic the DNA structure. The name "Gattaca" is composed entirely of the letters used to label the nucleotide bases of DNA. The four nucleotode bases of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) are adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine, stuff like that.

It is a little unfair to call this movie a sci-fi movie because of the lack of sci-fi elements in this movie. It was mentioned somewhere that this movie probably is one of the lowest budget science fiction movie ever produced. And that is true, as you look at the movie with its simplicity involved as well as the set designs. All of those were made to give us a very organised feel of the future, a very orderly sensation, which the crew successfully pulled off.

With such a movie, we start to examine the nature of genetic discrimination. Of course, such a technology doesn't exist just yet, but writer Andrew Niccol truly exploited the possibilities of this technology in the future and then examined the problems that might be related to it. Of course, Niccol skillfully left out the political effects of it, but i guess that would only complicated the story in the most unnecessary way. Like a lot of other movie themed with discrimination - be it racial or sexual - there is always an underlying theme of a person wanting to fulfill a dream of his or her own, despite conventional ideas or traditions about his or her own race, gender, or even - like this movie - genes. Sure, you can always use this movie to examine the consequences of humans trying to meddle with the human genes. But to me, what struck me the most about this movie wasn't that issue, which to me was rather secondary, but really the journey and hardship of a man with his life truly bent on realising his dream. That to me was the most inspirational aspect of this movie, really.

You can argue that Jerome's character is a sinister one. With his own desire to become number one, or a champion, his greed to do so overwhelmed him throughout the film. You can use that to argue that his friendship with Vincent never was a true one, merely one built on self-benefit from both ends. But i say, although that is the case at the very beginning of the film (Jerome was portrayed as a proud, arrogant character at the start, evidently shown when he commented that Vincent's eyes aren't as beautiful as his own), but i seriously doubt if that continued till the end of the movie. I thought by the end of the movie - which must be one of the most moving sequence i have ever seen in cinematic history - there wasn't a hint of what we saw between that friendship at the very beginning.

Writer Andrew Niccol never compromised on the action, with his smart screenplay and character development. He keeps the audience on the edge without actually having the need of creepy music, or his characters pretending to be scared. He merely switches in between shots, creating a sense of tension in the audience. The scene with Jerome desperately climbing up the spiral staircase with own his arms as the detective arrives must have been the most tensed up i have ever been. All and all, a truly well crafted movie and one that i strongly recommend.

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