Gattaca was ahead of its time

I am certainly a movie buff. I love the big-budget Hollywood blockbuster that comes out now and then. Ultra-realistic computer special effects have become an integral storytelling tool and these are always in the science fiction and fantasy movies that I like.

But my favorite science fiction almost contains zero special effects. It is carried by the performance of the cast. Yet it is the story and its lessons that make it my favorite movie. Released around six years ago, the movie is Gattaca.

Some people remember Gattaca as the movie where real life couple Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman first met. Maybe even a few remember it as one of Jude Law’s earliest Hollywood features. I remember it as a science-fiction noir film on the dark side of eugenics and genetic engineering. It is the story of a man’s struggle to overcome the limitations set by nature and society.

The setting is in a world in the near future where social status is determined by a person’s genetic potential. Society’s best jobs and privileges are reserved for the genetically perfect who are usually the product of genetic enhancement. The menial jobs belong to the genetically inferior, a new untouchable caste, usually the product of natural reproduction and the sufferers of various defects like asthma, epilepsy and other disorders. They are the offspring of parents who could not afford the pre-birth enhancements essential to a better life. They are officially invalids.

Ethan Hawke’s character, Vincent Freeman, is an invalid afflicted with myopia and doomed by his genes to die before he is 40, yet he dreams of reaching the stars and traveling to space. But this privilege is denied to one such as him. So he finds a member of this super race, Eugene Morrow (played by Jude Law) who has been crippled by an accident. This quadriplegic agrees to lend his genetic superiority and identity to Vincent, but for a price. He must finance Morrow’s elitist lifestyle.

Vincent would face many obstacles in assuming Morrow’s identity. He had to live up to his disguise’s physical attributes. One could not help but admire his fortitude at the extreme measures he took to take on Morrow’s identity. He carried Morrow’s blood, urine, hair and skin samples for random DNA testing. How determined is Vincent? He had to add some inches to his height by extending the bone in his legs. The very painful process did not deter him. Vincent had everything to gain and nothing to lose.

There was also his brother Anton, the genetically-enhanced second child. Even though Vincent was the firstborn, he never received the love he deserved from his parents. As Detective Anton Morrow, he knows about Vincent’s subterfuge and is determined to end it.

The penultimate scene would be the final confrontation between the brothers. Vincent challenges Anton to swim across a turbulent sea to an island near the beach where they used to play as kids. It is man versus super man, a veritable mismatch with Vincent’s freedom at stake. But it ends with Vincent saving Anton from drowning. Never ever underestimate the will of a desperate man.

Gattaca is a movie ahead of its time. There are issues now that would make it a movie of the times. With the advances in genetic research, it would not be long when the first genetically-enhanced being will awaken out of its test tube. The very thought of it is an affront to God but consistent with Darwin’s theory of evolution. The strong shall survive and the weak shall perish.

The movie tells a human story as well. How can one man succeed if society and nature has already doomed his fate? It tells us how we can achieve our dreams. Vincent had one philosophy, to hold nothing back and give every ounce of strength you have. If there was one thing I learned from the movie, it is this: if you want something bad enough, the price does not matter, so long as you pay it in the end.