Gattaca (1997): The Review
A warning about trans-humanism
I have a list of classic sci-fi movies to watch; the genre is one that I thoroughly enjoy for it’s intrinsic philosophical property, and what I mean by this is that most sci-fi movies are centered around a “why?” or a “what if?”. They exist to show us a possibility of the future, and what an answer to one, or both, of these questions could look like—whether it’s the global corpo hegemony of Blade Runner, the rebellion of human-created sentient beings as in Terminator, or, in the case of Gattaca, state-sanctioned eugenics in the name of health and progress.
I had a free afternoon recently and decided to watch one of the movies on my list, and in case it isn’t glaringly obvious, I chose Gattaca. There wasn’t any particular reason why I chose it other than it was free on Amazon Prime, and that was reason enough. However, between me watching this movie, and me writing this review, something has come up that is frighteningly coincidental, but I’ll save that for later. For now, I will get into the review.
WARNING: Spoilers below
Gattaca opens with a rundown of the world as it exists in-universe. Genetic testing has become so efficient and mainstreamed that all babies are tested at birth for full knowledge of all future health ailments. In fact, the testing can be done on embryos, preventing even the implantation of defective or degenerate embryos.
Our protagonist is not one of these pre-selected embryos of expected high-quality livelihood. He is what is referred to in the movie as a “faith-birth”, meaning the parents have faith their child will be genetically OK. Now, despite doing everything the natural way, when the protagonist is born he is immediately screened for future potential genetic issues, and is given a life expectancy of 30 years. His mother then names him after his father, Anton, but the father quickly interjects and demands he be named Vincent, and the next scene tells you why.
After Vincent’s birth, his parents want another child, this time however they get select few embryos checked ahead of time. They go with a boy, since they want Vincent to have a brother, and the select the embryo with the best genetic potential. This boy receives the name Anton, his father’s name.
Here is where I want to make my first comment: Anton (the father) makes a split-second decision at the birth of his firstborn son to not name him after himself. Why? Because he is predicted to die young. The firstborn son has lost his namesake and his inheritance due to a predicted genetic inferiority. Before he had a chance to walk, he was deemed unfit. And the father, so afraid that his own name would perish, then goes the route of eugenics to ensure his name lives on, and lives on well.
This is a micro-perspective of a macro-reality: those that are not pre-selected as embryos for their genetic superiority are turned into second-class citizens. In the movie, they are called in-valids, which Vincent is, or valids, like his brother Anton.
The movie continues here to show the competition between the two brothers as they age. There is no explicit ill-will given to Vincent from his family, but they do throw water on his dreams and aspirations, chaining him down through potential genetic inferiority (again, all the prejudice comes from predicted genetic issues, not guaranteed issues). Eventually, we reach the present time of the movie, where Vincent has assumed the identity of one of the valids through black-market means. A man named Jerome who was genetically projected to be in excellent shape physically and intellectually.
The movie spends a little time on the relationship of Vincent and Jerome (who was a willing participant in this fake-identity scheme),and from it we see Jerome’s own reasoning for going along with everything. He was a valid, and was projected to be excellent in physical sports. But, he came in second at the Olympics, and so became disillusioned with himself and stepped in front of traffic and became paralyzed.
I don’t want to spend much more time simply writing a synopsis of this movie, so to speed it along: Vincent spends much of the movie hiding his true identity from law enforcement as they search for a murder suspect and they find his real DNA near the crime scene. His brother, Anton, being the lead detective does find him out, but drops the whole thing in the end (Vincent was not the murderer for what it’s worth). And Vincent succeeds in his dream to be sent on a mission to one of Jupiter’s moons. While Jerome, succumbing to his own depression, immolates himself in a large scale furnace originally meant to destroy any of Vincent’s loose skin flakes and hair.
It’s a bittersweet ending. We see Vincent achieve his dreams despite all opposition and his presumed genetic inferiority, but then we see Jerome commit suicide out of a sense of helplessness despite his supposed genetic superiority.
Gattaca doesn’t moralize any of this. It introduces you to a world where genetic screening and selection are borderline mandatory if you ever want your offspring to succeed (despite it being illegal to discriminate between valids and in-valids), and if you want to give your children the best chance to start their life off with some kind of advantage. But outside Vincent’s own struggles, the world doesn’t “learn a lesson”, no one rethinks how things are done (except one doctor at the very end). Which is GOOD. Movies should only show, not tell, and no one needs to be told what is good or bad in a lecturing way while appreciating art.
Recently, a company called “Nucleus Genomics” announced an “embryo comparison” screening kit to compare embryos and see their hair color, eye color, and genetic dispositions to hundreds of diseases. It is Gattaca made real.
This opening of the Pandora’s Box of eugenics will, given enough time, result in a Gattaca world. Where you will be an outsider to not participate in this, or to have been born “the faith way”. The end result of this, of course, is not the curing of diseases, but the eradication of humans who are predisposed to the diseases. It is not an act of paternal love and of healing, but of a form of sacrifice, where the inferior must be culled, and in return, you get your “perfect” child. Siblings murdered en mass so that you may live will haunt the minds of those selected and born from this. And the parents, the destroyer of their own children, will be judged by them at the consummation of all things.
The pro-life wing of the Church already struggles to counter IVF apologia, and it will struggle in this as well. But it must not falter (and cannot, as Christ has promised us), but we are entering into the next stage in trans-humanism, and we must be ready to fight against it.
The temptation will be there to give your children “the best advantage you can give them”, with no care given to the cost being the death of thousands of other embryos. And as a father, I see the temptation myself. Why would I not want to have my offspring be the best that they can be? But, we already know what the participation in creation looks like: natural procreation. Trying to then interfere in that will only lead us down a path of inhuman behaviors.
Gattaca is highly-recommended by me. Not only is it a well written/acted/directed movie, but it does the sci-fi genre justice, and forces you to philosophize.
I give it an 8/10.
As a little side-note to: we really do not make movies like this anymore. Watching anything from before the 2010s is so refreshing. Even the “bad” stuff is better than most movies nowadays.