Day 102: Gattaca

"You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton: I never saved anything for the swim back."

From the minute of his birth, Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) was set out to live a lowly life. Living in the “not-so-distant future,” no longer does the color of your skin play a role in your social class and ranking. The world now revolves around DNA. Everything is technology based, right down to the birth of a new born baby and deciding the outcome of the rest of it's life. With the aid of genetic selection, babies can be programed with any trait and quality the parents desire. In Vincent's case though, his parent opted for a natural birth, which they quickly came to regret. Without genetic selection, Vincent was plagued with a high probability of mental illness and an extreme heart disorder. Even worse, Vincent's life expectancy was only 30.2 years.   

After their decision of natural birth with Vincent, his parents decided to have another child, but this time through the aid of genetic selection. Named after his father, Anton is far superior to his brother Vincent in almost every aspect of life. By the age of 8, Anton is almost 4 inches taller than Vincent who is 10 years old.

In the future where the movie takes place, there are only two distinct social classes that people are broken into. The first are known as Valids; people who have superior DNA through genetic selection. The rest are known as In-Valids which are people like Vincent, who were born with flaws in there DNA. It seems far-fetched, and I will be the first to admit that I doubt we will ever see a class system like this, but it did create a great story. Due to Vincent's In-Valid status, he will never be accepted into the role of his dream to become an astronaut. Growing up, Vincent would study and read about space for countless hours, hoping one day to make his dream come true.

Receiving his first real line of work, Vincent becomes a janitor at an aeronautical facility named “Gattaca.” Besides the janitors, the only people that work at Gattaca are “Valids.” With a burning desire to still become an astronaut, Vincent devises a plan to gain access as a worker within Gattaca's main offices and work towards becoming an astronaut.

With only one way to gain access as a full fledged worked inside of Gattaca, Vincent decides to become a “borrowed latter,” someone who impersonates another through is genetic profile. He takes on the identity of Jerome Eugene Morrow (Jude Law), who was once a world class swimmer who has a genetic profile that is off the charts. To take on this challege, Vincent has to take on every genetic aspect that Jerome has. Using his blood, hair strands, urine and tissue, Vincent gains access as a “Valid” withing Gattaca and works his way to becoming an astronaut destined for space.

While it all seems to be going smoothly, one thing now stands in Vincent's way, and that is the death of the head director at Gattaca. While Vincent isn't the murderer of the victim, one of his eyelashes is found at the office leaving his “In-Valid” DNA in the hands of detectives. Now, while Vincent is living his life as Jerome Morrow, detectives are on a mad search for Vincent Freeman.

As for the rest of the plot, I'll leave it up to you to watch the movie and find out for yourselves what happens. It's definitely worth the the two hours of time to watch it to put it at the top of your Netflix queue or take a trip over to Blockbuster, however it is you watch movies these days.

One of the things that I personally enjoyed about this movie is the developing story. Not only was it original, but it flowed perfectly. Each character developed throughout the movie in such a smooth process. It was unusually easy to follow along seeing as how it was a sci-fi movie.