#gatacca

I watched this around the same time as Blade Runner, and once again failed to write up some thoughts about this film. This movie was very overwhelmingly good and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I think in my AI review I mention that I'm not a huge Jude Law fan, but he surprised me in that movie. I think that I'm actually a Jude Law fan but for some reason won't allow myself to admit it. His character is sort of secondary to Ethan Hawke in this film, but I still enjoyed him a lot.

Gatacca takes place in the near future where eugenics is common and people can pick and choose the genes of their children. Ethan Hawke's character was born the old fashioned way (I liked the parallels of the taboo nature of giving birth this movie had with Brave New World) and is plagued with genetic disorders and is told he will not live long. Due to his subpar DNA he is relegated to a lower social status (Brave New World again here) and can never achieve his dream of being an astronaut.

Eventually, he buys the identity of Jude Law who is a former athlete who is now paralyzed. Through a series of cool future shit, he is able to use Jude Law's blood and skin and shit (not actually his shit, although that would be funny if he had Jude Law's shit and used it as stool sample) to pose as someone who was genetically qualified to be an astronaut. Uma Thurman plays a character who is somewhat genetically inferior to Jude Law/Ethan Hawke, yet is still attracted to him since he's appearing as an all star in the space program thing.

The rest of the movie is a bit of a love story, although much more. Gatacca plays with the idea of eugenics from an interesting point of view, albeit not necessarily an original idea. The implications of it are interesting and it demonstrates more or less the same things that Brave New World tried to get across. Utilitarian function can never replace true human happiness and all that stuff. The representation of the future in this movie is very art deco and has a nice film noir feel to it, which was pretty fun. It's also very gritty which lends itself nicely to the sort of dark side of human nature the film looks at.