Gattaca
Starring
Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Gore Vidal, Loren Dean, Blair Underwood, Ernest Borgnine, Tony Shalhoub
What would a world be like if you were judged at birth to be suitable to be the recipient of societies benefits or unfit?
I was all set to dismiss this movie as a bit of mean spirited anti everything movie. You know the type, rave about surveillance, security, pollution, on and on and on.
Then I started paying attention to the overall ambiance. Things stopped adding up. Although it appeared modern time frame or even future, the architecture was decidedly 50s, Dress was conservative even for that time, maybe 20s? Tech though advanced seemed almost steam punk in nature. What I realized was that we have a brave new world / 1984 type of thing going on here - almost an alternative or parallel Earth mind set. Then the 40s perfect genome perfect baby mentality starts to make a whole lot of sense. It's Earth, perhaps, just not quite OUR Earth. Everything is this surreal perfect generic low-tech high-tech uber surveillance society and everything stays in the 30s/40s double breasted button down motif right to the end. Space suits? Seat belts? Nope, 3 piece suits, ties, high-backed seats in a circle and the launch techs? Right out of a Russian 60s propaganda film.
In the middle of this is a "genetically undesirable" who's only option is menial labor who dreams of the stars. I wouldn't think of ruining the twisted hiding in plain sight that is the pivot for this movie, and the obligatory reversals are very much in evident, perhaps to a fault, but the one thing that does happen with these "twists" is that it is extremely difficult to predict the ending. You will find yourself at the last few moment in the film muttering...didn't see that coming.
Gattaca is of course a movie with a bit of age on it being filmed in 1997 which when put into perspective was incredibly forward thinking in ways that as breath taking as they were, movies like Blade Runner, could not hope to be. There is no question that Gattica is still very timely in the subject matter it addressed.
The Blu-Ray is every bit an addition to the movie experience. We have an out take reel, and several featurettes that explain the original vision, the making of thought process and strangely enough a separate science of DNA.
Now I am going to warn you that if you are planning on watching the movie for the first time, it does carry a fairly strong "message" but no more so that some of the totally self serving disingenuous crap that we see lately that is only politically correct for the dollars sake. With Gattica they went so far as to cut the most troublesome messages out of the general release because the didnt want to pound us over the head with "the Message" so that is a serious kudo for me.
I don't know why I let this one go when it first came to the big screen or why I never pursued it in the intervening years, but I have got to say that Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law really do excellent jobs and when you consider the time frame and some of the neat info from the short films you appreciate just how good this movie is.
The movie is an 8 solid and the special extras are 9 (why a 9? because I have kinda grown to like the feature with the director voice over...didnt get that) so Gattaca is a solid 9 in my book. Being a message movie, you may feel it a bit heavy handed and some might be put off by the age, but considering that alien and 2001 Blade Runner and their ilk still hold their weight, this has got to be a film in their league.
Starring
Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Gore Vidal, Loren Dean, Blair Underwood, Ernest Borgnine, Tony Shalhoub
What would a world be like if you were judged at birth to be suitable to be the recipient of societies benefits or unfit?
I was all set to dismiss this movie as a bit of mean spirited anti everything movie. You know the type, rave about surveillance, security, pollution, on and on and on.
Then I started paying attention to the overall ambiance. Things stopped adding up. Although it appeared modern time frame or even future, the architecture was decidedly 50s, Dress was conservative even for that time, maybe 20s? Tech though advanced seemed almost steam punk in nature. What I realized was that we have a brave new world / 1984 type of thing going on here - almost an alternative or parallel Earth mind set. Then the 40s perfect genome perfect baby mentality starts to make a whole lot of sense. It's Earth, perhaps, just not quite OUR Earth. Everything is this surreal perfect generic low-tech high-tech uber surveillance society and everything stays in the 30s/40s double breasted button down motif right to the end. Space suits? Seat belts? Nope, 3 piece suits, ties, high-backed seats in a circle and the launch techs? Right out of a Russian 60s propaganda film.
In the middle of this is a "genetically undesirable" who's only option is menial labor who dreams of the stars. I wouldn't think of ruining the twisted hiding in plain sight that is the pivot for this movie, and the obligatory reversals are very much in evident, perhaps to a fault, but the one thing that does happen with these "twists" is that it is extremely difficult to predict the ending. You will find yourself at the last few moment in the film muttering...didn't see that coming.
Gattaca is of course a movie with a bit of age on it being filmed in 1997 which when put into perspective was incredibly forward thinking in ways that as breath taking as they were, movies like Blade Runner, could not hope to be. There is no question that Gattica is still very timely in the subject matter it addressed.
The Blu-Ray is every bit an addition to the movie experience. We have an out take reel, and several featurettes that explain the original vision, the making of thought process and strangely enough a separate science of DNA.
Now I am going to warn you that if you are planning on watching the movie for the first time, it does carry a fairly strong "message" but no more so that some of the totally self serving disingenuous crap that we see lately that is only politically correct for the dollars sake. With Gattica they went so far as to cut the most troublesome messages out of the general release because the didnt want to pound us over the head with "the Message" so that is a serious kudo for me.
I don't know why I let this one go when it first came to the big screen or why I never pursued it in the intervening years, but I have got to say that Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law really do excellent jobs and when you consider the time frame and some of the neat info from the short films you appreciate just how good this movie is.
The movie is an 8 solid and the special extras are 9 (why a 9? because I have kinda grown to like the feature with the director voice over...didnt get that) so Gattaca is a solid 9 in my book. Being a message movie, you may feel it a bit heavy handed and some might be put off by the age, but considering that alien and 2001 Blade Runner and their ilk still hold their weight, this has got to be a film in their league.
