Next: #5 Silent Running (Previous: #3 Serenity)
Like Primer, Gattaca is one of those cerebral triumphs that defied simple marketing campaigns (it also didn’t help that the movie studio almost failed to market the thing at all).
There’s suspense here, sure, but the lingering brilliance of Andrew Niccol’s movie is its larger societal statements, the way it compares genetically-purified humans with those who were born naturally. How would a world of purified humans behave and arrange itself? And what exactly constitutes a “better” human experience? (Big news: Interviews with Gattaca’s Ethan Hawke, and other ‘underrated’ filmmakers, will be published on Techland Jan. 18)
Vincent is an exceptional man with inferior genes, who embarks on a tricky scheme to fool the world into allowing him onboard a spaceship bound for Saturn. Much like Children of Men, Vincent’s story is merely a lens through which we can view a larger world out of balance, and see in that imbalance the ways in which our value system as a species could so easily be corrupted. Vincent’s plight is a fascinating one, mostly for what it has to say about all those who are deemed more “worthy” than him.
Next: #5 Silent Running
More at Techland: Ethan Hawke talks about playing the ‘peacenik’ vampire of Daybreakers
