Gattaca

Movie Poster for Gattaca
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Movie Poster for Gattaca

Gattaca is a 1997 science fiction film by director/screenwriter Andrew Niccol, starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law and Alan Arkin.

It combines a Hollywood action/adventure plot with a vision of a future that some reviewers thought was intelligent and mature, in which genetic testing and eugenic genetic engineering has altered mankind to such an extent that children conceived by traditional sexual reproduction are members of an underclass.

Recent developments in genetic diagnosis of inherited diseases and the real-world technologies of in vitro fertilisation and embryo selection have made Gattaca appear to be a vision of the not-too-distant future.

Contents

Plot

: Plot or ending details follow.

In a society in which genetic engineering is common and DNA determines what opportunities people have, Vincent (Hawke), was concieved without the aid of this technology and suffers from nearsightedness and a congenital heart defect. Facing discrimination and prejudice, the only way he can achieve his dream of becoming an astronaut is to impersonate someone else. He hires a former Olympic athlete, Jerome Eugene Morrow (Law), who was crippled in an accident, to supply him with DNA samples which will allow Vincent to assume his identity. The plan works perfectly until a mission director is murdered and a trace of Vincent's own DNA is found at the crime scene in the form of an eyelash. Now Vincent must evade ever-increasing security as the mission launch date approaches and he pursues a relationship with co-worker, Irene Cassini (Thurman).

The story has some parallels with Robert Heinlein's novel Beyond This Horizon, published in 1942. In that story, doctors chose each person's genes by selecting from among the parents' genes. Similarly to Gattaca, new genes could not be brought into the child's gene pool without extra work and money; in Beyong This Horizon, doctors were forbidden to add anything not already found among the parents' genes. And just as in Gattaca, those whose genes were not chosen were looked down upon. Another parallel with Heinlein's writing is that, just as in Heinlein's story Starman Jones, the protagonist memorized a book on astrogation and falsified his identity in order to secure a job.

Trivia

  • The name of the film is derived from GATTACA, an arbitrary DNA base pair sequence. The recent publication of the human genome sequence reveals that GATTACA, along with most other short base-pair sequences, occurs commonly throughout the human genome.
  • To create an eerie atmosphere of ubiquitous physical perfection, the director cast fashion models as extras.
  • Vincent's brother Anton is his Antagonist, whereas 'Eugene' means 'well born'.
  • The staircase in the house of the real Jerome Morrow has helical structure and actually holds resemblance to Watson and Crick's DNA model.
  • Uma Thurman's character is named Irene Cassini. Jean Dominique Cassini was a 17th century astronomer who discovered the prominent gap in Saturn's main rings, as well as the icy moons, Iapetus, Dione, Rhea, and Thethys. Cassini-Huygens is a space mission intended to study Saturn and its moons, launched in 1997. The space mission in Gattaca is destined for Titan, Saturn's fourteenth moon.
  • Gattaca is partially filmed in Marin County at the Marin County Civic Center (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), which is called "Gattaca Aerospace Corporation" in the movie. Much of the interior of Gattaca, however, is filmed in Hollywood, except for scenes near escalators.
  • The FBI agents are called "Hoovers," both a reference to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and to a vacuum cleaner brand, the Hoover Company. There are numerous shots of vacuums being used to gather DNA evidence.
  • Well-known American author Gore Vidal is cast as Director Josef.
  • The public announcement system of Gattaca is spoken in Esperanto, a constructed international language.

See also

External links




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