Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca warns of the dangers of valuing perfection over humanness

Another really useful article.

To perceive Andrew Niccol’s futuristic thriller Gattaca as simply a story of ambition and conquest is to ignore the film’s more potent power and message. Gattaca presents us with a reflection of our world, a chilling and disturbing reminder of the dangers of absolute dependence on technology.

The desire for perfection and the methods used to achieve it are the focuses of the film, and our protagonist, Vincent Freeman, embodies all that is good and evil in the attempt to be “valid”. Vincent’s persistence to succeed beyond his genetic limitations is noble, but the more interesting aspect of the film is the way he sets about achieving his dream of becoming one of the “right kind of people”.

Visually the film is intoxicating and aesthetically inviting with its heightened use of colour, an evocative score from Michael Nyman, the masterful use of framing, the casting of “beautiful” people and the sleek, symmetry of the set. Our desire to be part of this world is logical. Vincent’s flashbacks to his “invalid”, albeit real, childhood are done in sepia tones and heavy, drab costumes suggesting a world that is obsolete, uninteresting and where one’s potential is limited by “God birth”. Conception “the natural way” has given way to science; timber and earthy textures have been usurped by chrome and stainless steel, and natural light is ignored in favour of synthetic light.

Underlying the overt perception of perfection, acceptance and what is desirable is the danger and destructive nature of that desire. Denial of natural talents and flaws, the rejection of nature and the disregard of human feelings can only lead to chaos.

Niccol’s use of blue throughout the film reflects futuristic technology but also the coldness and sterility of this world.

As a creature determined to be part of this world, Vincent is often filmed surrounded by this light. A good example is the opening where his body matter falls to the ground with a thud. It is not coincidental that our first image of Vincent is as a segmented, incomplete figure, broken up by the lines of the incinerator. In his attempts to be accepted into Gattaca he is continuously reminded of his imperfection by his constant struggle with his failing “genetic quotient”, his body.

Vincent’s determination to succeed and fly to Saturn’s moon Titan sees him change his identity, relinquish his family and his past and suffer extraordinary pain to achieve his dream. But Niccol’s question is whether it is all worth it. Just what has to be sacrificed to be accepted and embraced into the lifeless and sterile world of perfection?

Read more here.

Sci-fi film Gattaca plays on our fear of technology

I have posted this before but re-read as part of your revision, it is very good.

Vincent, the central character of Gattaca, is a liar and a cheat. Yet, as is typical for a Hollywood movie where the individual star personality is accorded the status of morally superior hero, he is ultimately viewed as a victor with whom we, the audience, may identify and sympathise.

How and why does this happen? Shortly into the opening credit sequence the camera, and by proxy the audience, isolates and identifies Vincent, gliding slowly upon his body and his obsession with it. The way he is captured in the frame, complemented by the mood of tragic grandeur in the music, serves to further set him apart from all others, and to heighten our sense of his loneliness.

Additional shots in this sequence of him strapping a bag of urine to his thigh, and of constructing a fingerprint containing a blood sample unlikely to be his own, suggest that Vincent is building a false identity. The stripping away of his real DNA as contained in loose body hair, skin particles and nail clippings, highly magnified and accompanied by booming, echoing sound effects as they fall in slow motion to the ground and then are burnt in a furnace, indicate that in these elements lay his fate, his history and his future.

His voiceover narration a minute or two later, where he refers first to himself in the third person as “Jerome Morrow” (we assume at this point he is not speaking of someone else), then to himself in the first person as “not Jerome Morrow”, not only accentuates this sense of identity, signposting it as an important theme throughout the film, but also fulfils the role of further connecting us emotionally to him – for this is his story. And by now we are primed to accept Vincent’s practised deceit and dishonesty as being for some as yet unexplained “good” or ethical purpose.

The critical viewer may have a problem with this. It is clear that Gattaca, like Blade Runner, is a science fiction film that is presented in a highly sophisticated way in terms of set design, sombre mood and stellar casting. Nevertheless, it falls into the category of a long line of science fiction movies that, consciously or otherwise, reflect community suspicion of technological developments (such as nuclear radioactivity, computerisation and biological cloning), and what these may mean for us either right now or in the future – especially if controlled by the “wrong people”.

Read the rest here.

Exploring Dystopia – Gattaca

Some more reading on the film – this time from Exploring Dystopia:

“As night-fall does not come at once, neither does oppression… It is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air — however slight — lest we become victims of the darkness.”

Justice William O. Douglas

It is the near future, and Vincent/Jerome Morrow has a problem. A genetic problem. He is an imperfect man in a perfect world.

Every day it seems as if people are discovering new uses for the human genetic code. Hardly a day passes when there isn’t a researcher who claims to have found another miracle gene. One for obesity, for cancer, for asthma, for manic-depression, and so forth. Gene therapy is on the rise, already some people have been used for the first leading forms of treatments, using recombinant DNA, injected by genetically-altered viruses. There is even talk (and perhaps an attempt) to clone a human. Ever since the decryption of the human genetic code, a burst of new research in the field of genetics has occurred, and certainly, as our ability to manipulate our DNA increases, so too will the debate over designer babies escalate.

 

Vincent/Jerome Morrow lives in such a future. It is one where science, and not religion, has taken over society. He is one born of a new subclass, one determined not by race or colour or political standing or even economic position, but of genetics. It is a world where a new form of discrimination has arisen, called genoism, discrimination according to one’s genetic purity. He is one known as an invalid, a person born by normal means, whose genes have not been altered — contrary to the valids who are people whose genes have been altered to give them “the best of their parents”. When he is born a reading is taken from his blood, and the probabilities of certain afflictions and genetic diseases are read off, one after another, to his dumbstruck parents. His probable life expectancy? A mere 33 years.

 

Soon after his parents get a child conceived of ‘natural birth’, one genetically altered to have the best characteristics of its parents, and none of the ancient predispositions towards genetic diseases. The younger brother soon exceeds his elder, physically. Young Vincent, who has myopia and a predisposition towards heart problems, cannot keep up with his designer baby brother, and this leads to intense sibling rivalry. The two brothers are distant, unaffectionate towards each other, challenging one another to games of ‘chicken’ – a contest to find out who can swim furthest without floundering. Usually his enhanced brother beats him, but one time it was different. Young invalid Vincent saves Anton from drowning, and this sets the stage for a future encounter. Swimming and water become well-used motifs in this excellent film.

Read more here.

Gattaca: A Fully Imagined Future

A very interesting film review from Janet Maslin:

Imagine an Orwellian story presented with a cool, eerie precision like Peter Greenaway’s and you have some sense of “Gattaca,” a handsome and fully imagined work of cautionary futuristic fiction. Its subject is bigotry, though the races and sexes appear to enjoy equal freedom, which is to say not much. The film’s world revolves around strict conformity at places like the Gattaca Corp., where employees wear somber uniforms and stern, serious expressions — except for one man with a discreetly worried look: Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), Gattaca’s house imposter.

 

Vincent has already tried conventional means of working his way to the top at Gattaca, but in his case a janitor’s job is the limit. That is because Vincent came into the world in what is now the conventional manner but could, in an age of genetic engineering, become obsolete. The film envisions a culture of unapologetic discrimination, with genetically Valid individuals spared defects like baldness, alcoholism and attention-deficit disorder and given great privilege.

Read the rest here.

Breeding Super Humans

Something to help you with your revision of the film.

Sci-fi film Gattaca plays on our fear of technology.

Vincent, the central character of Gattaca, is a liar and a cheat. Yet, as is typical for a Hollywood movie where the individual star personality is accorded the status of morally superior hero, he is ultimately viewed as a victor with whom we, the audience, may identify and sympathise.

How and why does this happen? Shortly into the opening credit sequence the camera, and by proxy the audience, isolates and identifies Vincent, gliding slowly upon his body and his obsession with it. The way he is captured in the frame, complemented by the mood of tragic grandeur in the music, serves to further set him apart from all others, and to heighten our sense of his loneliness.

Additional shots in this sequence of him strapping a bag of urine to his thigh, and of constructing a fingerprint containing a blood sample unlikely to be his own, suggest that Vincent is building a false identity. The stripping away of his real DNA as contained in loose body hair, skin particles and nail clippings, highly magnified and accompanied by booming, echoing sound effects as they fall in slow motion to the ground and then are burnt in a furnace, indicate that in these elements lay his fate, his history and his future.

His voiceover narration a minute or two later, where he refers first to himself in the third person as “Jerome Morrow” (we assume at this point he is not speaking of someone else), then to himself in the first person as “not Jerome Morrow”, not only accentuates this sense of identity, signposting it as an important theme throughout the film, but also fulfils the role of further connecting us emotionally to him – for this is his story. And by now we are primed to accept Vincent’s practised deceit and dishonesty as being for some as yet unexplained  “good” or ethical purpose.

Read the rest here.

 

Gene Genie – Gattaca’s structure

Decoding a film’s DNA can be enlightening. Let’s look at the structure of Gattaca.

Much of Hollywood screenwriting theory and film analysis is based around the “three-act structure”, which, according to Syd Field (author of the influential Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting), “is a beginning, middle and end. The beginning corresponds to act I, the middle to act II and the end to act III.”

However, the three-act structure has its detractors, such as screenwriting guru John Truby, who believes the three-act analysis is simplistic with regard to the plot density of many films today.

Field’s model starts with act I, the set-up. Characters and relationships are established and the dramatic premise is launched.

So if we look at act I of Gattaca, the main character, Vincent, born naturally as a “faith birth”, aspires to become an astronaut. To do this he must take on the genetic identity of someone else. His relationship is established with his family, Eugene and Irene among others.

Act II is the confrontation where, Field says, “the main character encounters obstacles that keep him/her from achieving their dramatic need, which is defined as what the character wants to win/gain/get or achieve”.

So in this act, Vincent is implicated in the murder of the mission director. This gets in the way of his need to go into space.

Act III is the resolution. Through her discovery of Eugene, Irene finally unearths the truth about Vincent as Jerome. Vincent confronts his brother Anton and finally makes it into outer space.

However, according to Truby, the beginning, middle and end concept “is not wrong, but simplistic”.

Read the rest here.

What is cinematography?

We have discussed cinematography as part of our studies of a visual text but some of you struggle to write about it. Cinematography includes techniques of composition and framing, camera movement, the manipulation of light and the use of special technical tricks.

Camera movement is something that confuses but what it is to do with is panning and tilting as well as the ways that the camera can be moved through space. Most of you are familiar with a dolly (a mobile camera platform on wheels or mounted on tracks) or a crane. Cinematographers also manipulate light (both natural and artificial) to create illumination, contrast and depth. They may also play around with exposure, use slow or fast motion, glass shots and matte shots to create optical illusions.

The use of technical tricks means that the camera can be used in ways other than photographing and reproducing reality. Cinematography is an art. It can create striking images, manipulate mood and atmosphere and meaning. A director relies very much on the artistic and technical skills of the cinematographer. The cinematographer hones the audience’s focus towards where the director wants to them to look and they do that by using light, colour or composition.

In terms of the production process it is the cinematographer that brings together aspects of the creative process with the technological side. Cinematographers need to understand visual aesthetics and they often study film history, painting and photography. Some people describe cinematography as ‘painting with light’. Cinematographers also need to know the technical aspects of their craft such as the optical, mechanical and camera processes.

The job of a cinematographer, is in a nutshell, to create and maintain the right visual style for the film, whatever the genre and have the technical expertise to deal with the production requirements. They have to be able to realise the director’s vision.

Gattaca – an overview to kick start your revision

Kickstart your revision with this site . Here’s a taste:

The film opens with a text from the Bible – Ecclesiastes 7:13 “Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked?” It continues to tell how our civilisation may, in the not too distant future, attempt to do this.

This is a world in which women take swabs of their lips to catch the saliva from a potential husband’s kiss in order to have the DNA analysed – to assess their positive and negative attributes. It is a world in which pianists are genetically engineered so that they can play pieces “that can only be played with 12 fingers”. It is a world in which police and security checks are carried out by immediate DNA analysis from blood samples.

Vincent, the main character, was conceived by a young couple in love – in the back of a car rather than in a laboratory. Thus he was destined to be a second class citizen along with others born in the same way – and called “faith births” or “degenerates” or “invalids”. Within seconds of his birth his DNA was analysed and his parents were told that he had a 99% chance of a heart disorder and should die when he was 30.2 years old.

His parents decided to have a second son through “natural birth” as it was called – a process involving careful genetic selection and manipulation. This carefully engineered the child from the best bits of the father and mother, producing a child that (this time) was good enough to take the father’s name – Anton.

The struggle between the two brothers, with their regular swimming competitions, illustrates the struggle between “faith births” and “natural births”.

Read the rest here.

Nashville Scene Review of Gattaca

It is always interesting to read reviews of the film you are studying. Here is one from the Nashville Scene:

Only a few movies have managed to convey believably both the menace of a future society and the courageous resistance of some of its members. The rebellion portrayed is usually trite and cornball, an easy idealism that believes in the power of the human spirit over all threatening forces. There’s a reason that the most compelling vision of the future in literature continues to be 1984–we know the deadening power of totalitarian bureaucracies too well to believe in simple escapes from them.

Gattaca’s protagonist, Vincent (Ethan Hawke), dreams of a very literal escape; he’s in training for a flight to one of Saturn’s moons. In an age of instant DNA sequencing from any sample of tissue or bodily fluid, however, the only people admitted to the Gattaca corporation’s space program are the genetically perfect, engineered in the womb. Vincent is a “love child” with a high probability of heart problems and early death, so he buys the identity of Jerome, physical paragon and certified genius. When one of the flight directors is murdered on the job, the physical evidence vacuumed up at the scene threatens to expose Vincent as an “in-valid” only days before takeoff.

The assumed-identity plot, with its threat of constant disaster hidden in Vincent’s dead skin cells, is the consistently exciting part of Gattaca. Ethan Hawke, who has a tendency to overestimate his own charisma as an actor, is effective when restrained by a plot that requires him to blend into a robotic, homogeneous work force. The credit sequence shows Vincent’s methodical daily preparation as he attaches fake fingerprints to his digits; a cache of Jerome’s blood is hidden underneath for the instant blood test at the door, while Jerome’s urine is strapped to his thigh for the unannounced sampling. Writer-director Andrew Niccol subtly evokes a whole society that trusts its computer identity checks more than its common sense. When the murder investigation reveals that in-valid Vincent is on the grounds of Gattaca, a futuristic corporation, detective Alan Arkin never thinks to compare his picture to the actual faces of employees, preferring instead to rely on a blood test.

Read the rest here.