Gattaca

365 Films

Entry #45

Gattaca (1997)

Directed by Andrew Niccol

One of the most under appreciated films of the 90’s, Gattaca stands out as a vivid example of what science fiction can achieve in the visual medium.  Stylistic without being distractingly so, and executing a vision of the “not to distant” future, which is extraordinary in its timelessness, Gattaca is the kind of sci-fi long thought to have vanished.  The textures, colors, and design of the film are a marvel to behold.  All the more so considering it was shot on a shoestring compared to its equivalents in the genre.  The accomplishment is even more astounding when taken into account that this was writer-director Andrew Niccol’s first feature film.  His was a career that began with two flawless gems (he was also the writer of The Truman Show) and now has him directing adaptations of Stephenie Meyer books.  Gattaca remains his sole directorial triumph with the Nicolas Cage vehicle Lord of War coming in second as a crazily ambitious yet wildly uneven runner up.  Not to start a dog pile on the guy but watching the progression of his career has been all the more frustrating because of the startling vision he presented in Gattaca.  The film has such a haunting, lyrical quality to it that in watching it again recently, part of me thinks that the science fiction elements are just as much a MacGuffin as the murder subplot.  A subplot, which, by the way, is, so casually dismissed that a new term needs to be invented for its irrelevant mis-direction.  “Sub-MacGuffan?” “Super MacGuffan?” I’m just spit balling here.  That’s not to say the science of it is irrelevant and I should add Niccol displays a preternatural ability to convey information about an alternate reality without getting bogged down in exposition.  That part of the film is wonderfully thought out and exquisitely conceived.  The thematic aspects of the film that interest me these days are in the funereal tone that seems to be slathered all over the film.  Gattaca the place could very easily be swapped out for Hollywood or any other dream factory where the majority of those dreams are made outside with noses pressed up against glass.  The idea of being deemed from birth to be an unfit member of the world could be swapped out with the generation after generation of societal prejudice laid at the feet of so many human beings.  Jude Law and Ethan Hawke’s perfect performances reinforce this metaphorical through line.  For the duration of the story, these two act as mirrors, opposites, and towards the end, points of aspiration for each other.  The fact that life has given everything it promised for Hawke’s character and nothing of the sort for Law’s point to a worldview indicating that we are at once in control and out of control of our ultimate destinies.  In life we will always come up against thwarted ambitions and the lousy hands we are sometimes dealt, but it is our choice to either keep looking up at the sky or to become engulfed by the flames.  In Niccol’s vision, the key word in that sentence is choice.