The “thinking” sci-fi movie is one that seems to outlast the bigger, bolder, blow ’em up flicks, even as they don’t do as well initially at the box office, the theater where fans go to get wham bam entertainment and the home where they can sit back and maybe wrap their heads around it later. Titles like Blade Runner, Moon, Dark City, and even Cloud Atlas didn’t have the punch they were expected to have financially on release but have staying power that keeps them atop many lists of the best in the genre. Director Andrew Niccol‘s 1998 science fiction drama Gattaca is another on the pile, a slow moving treatise on ethics that didn’t perform well in cinemas but has remained a movie best known for how it makes you think.
In the “not-too-distant future” we follow a chap called Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), who is blessed with a blunt, on the nose family name but little else, his parents choosing to avoid the aid of genetic selection and go all natural for their first born. This they soon regret, learning on the boy’s birth that he’s got a grim future ahead with a series of “defects” including a bum ticker. For son number two, they opt for a wee more science and this time, get the dream child they were after. This of course, doesn’t sit all that well with poor Vincent, who spends much of his childhood in competition with his younger brother and losing all the time. Chicken in the sea is a dangerous game.
Skip ahead twenty-ish years and Vincent is a janitor at the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation, where secretly he dreams of flying to the stars. He’s registered “in-valid” though and couldn’t possibly get entry, but as luck would have it, opportunity knocks when he secretly sides with a wealthy but now paralyzed donor (Jude Law), a former swimming champion struck by a car who offers his superior genetic material for a bit of switcharoo. With some aggressive surgery and a daily regiment that I won’t spoil, Vincent transforms himself into Jerome and lands a position at Gattaca, earning a spot as a navigator on a ride to Saturn. What could go wrong?
Well, as this a mind tuner, a lot, and the film has almost nothing to do with that ride but rather the events leading up to it as Vincent – now Jerome – faces a final hurdle in the week before blast off as an exec at the company has been murdered, and despite Vincent’s diligence in trying to clear his genetic footprint at work, left behind an eyelash that detective’s discover, making him a prime suspect. Problem is, for the cops, the eyelash is from an “in-valid” and there are none at the company, supposedly. In a lock down, it’s only a matter of time before they uncover the truth, but can “Jerome” last long enough to get his seat on the rocket?
While it sort of props itself up as a mystery, it’s really just about the suspense as we of course know everything that is happening, the closing net of the police the real drama as Vincent must continually be on his toes in skirting the various new “DNA” checkpoints the investigators employ in trying to root out the suspect. There’s a young cop working lead on the case and it’s not much of a surprise in learning who he is, which ties into the themes of artificial genetics and natural selection but doesn’t have the WTF? power it maybe intends. However, the movie itself is a stylistic powerhouse with a calculated commitment to its aesthetics and drama that, while never feeling authentic, is outstanding science fiction and great entertainment.
I want to focus on a terrific sequence past the midpoint as things are heating up for Vincent and police are making some troubling connections. And this is where the love comes in, as Vincent, or rather Jerome in this case, has fallen for the alluring Irene Cassini (Uma Thurman), a valid by her own right but not entirely “superior” who also works at Gattaca and notices the handsome hardworking co-worker. She has long suspected something it’s quite right about him, but finds herself drawn to him, as he does for her, the two eventually joined by emotions and sex born from a night of violence and mystery. More importantly though, a trust built around a growing truth between them.
At Gattaca, police are narrowing their search and find some questionable similarities between a man named Jerome and an in-valid named Vincent. This prompts the lead detective (Loren Dean) to head to Jerome’s home, taking along Irene as well, knowing that she is apparently in a relationship with the man. With a moment to warn Jerome, who is actually Vincent, she tells him to go home, which he understands perfectly as meaning the cops are on their way to his house, where, we know, the real Jerome is living … in a wheelchair. Wicked twisty, right?
While the detective and Irene speed toward Jerome, the real Jerome is now forced to find a way to get from the floor he’s on to the floor above where the front door is, though there is only a spiral staircase in which to do that. Time for some climbing, his paralyzed legs useless, leaving him to drag his way up the open loops, the symbolism of course spot on as he, a former superior must work his way up a flight of stairs that resemble half a strand of DNA. Clever.
Tension builds as Irene and the cop arrive, awaiting a reply at the doorbell as Jerome just makes it in time, propping himself into a chair just as he lets them in. He’s a bit winded, but he’s also “home sick” so that works in his favor, but the surprise is that he’s not the Jerome that Irene knows but someone completely different. Incredibly, she keeps her composure, even when he calls her “sweetheart” and asks for a kiss. She pauses a fraction of a moment and then obliges, her world collapsing around her but sensing that there is good behind it and the man she fell in love with, who must surely be able to explain.
Satisfying the cop, who was thinking things were going to go another way, he leaves, and up the stairs arrives Vincent, the two “Jeromes” now facing Irene, who is of course befuddled and not the least bit heartbroken. What is happening? She flees and Vincent chases, looking to turn her back his way. I’ll leave it to you to discover what she does with this twist in their destiny and the inevitable, “What would I do?”
I really like how Niccol stages this brief encounter, giving us in a short shot, much about the expectations of the cop, the coy back and forth between Vincent and Jerome, Jerome’s own sense of bitterness for the failures in his once promised great life, and of course, the shattering effects for poor Irene, who makes choices in an almost impossibly troubled second where whatever she decides changes everything. Back to that trust.
Gattaca is a highly-structured tale with a purposeful plot so we’re not meant to ask why, say, there is no elevator in Jerome’s house, how he remains only on the bottom floor, and how Vincent got into the house and to the bottom floor while the cop and Irene are there. This is a movie that isn’t about the holes but rather the connectivity and the larger focus on the hubris of believing genetic manipulation is foolproof. It’s a unique viewing experience with a heavy current of darkness that poses a lot of questions within a fun noir-ish thriller. Give it a watch.