Film & Formal Analysis

Film & Formal Analysis

Prompts for Gattaca

1. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert asks an interesting question. First, he says that director Andrew Nichol’s most important set in the film is the “vast office where genetically superior computer programmers come to work every day, filing into their long rows of desks like . . . office slaves.” He then asks, “Why are ‘perfect’ human societies so often depicted by ranks of automatons? Is it because human nature resides in our flaws?” What do you think abut this? What is the film’s attitude on this subject?

2. One of the tag lines for the film is “There’s no gene for the human spirit.” And so, one of the questions the film asks is whether or not it is morally right to discriminate against those who have not been genetically altered. While most of us agree that being able to prevent disease would be one benefit of genetic engineering, would one of the negative aspects be that our society, like that of Gattaca, would look down on those who were, for whatever reason, not genetically enhanced? And what of the natural ability of those individuals who are born naturally? Would we deny them an education? Employment beyond the menial level?

3. The original screenplay concludes with the following coda: “In a few short years, scientists will have completed the Human Genome Project, the mapping of all the genes that make up a human being. After four billion years of evolution by the slow and clumsy method of natural selection, we have now evolved to the point where we can direct our own evolution. If only we had acquired this knowledge sooner, the following people may never have been born:
Abraham Lincoln – Marfan Syndrom
Emily Dickenson – Manic Depression
Vincent Van Gogh – Epilepsy
Albert Einstein – Dyslexia
John F. Kennedy – Addison’s Disease
Rita Hayworth – Alzheimer’s Disease
Ray Charles – Primary Glaucoma
Stephen Hawking – Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Jackie Joyner-Kersee – Asthma
Of course, the other birth that may never have taken place is your own…”

A version of the coda was filmed, but then cut from the final version of the film.
Should it have been left on? Or, more importantly, are the benefits of eradicating
diseases worth the risk of losing people like those listed above? For example,
Hawking’s mother has said that had her son not been afflicted with such a
debilitating disease, he would never have become the intellect he is now. His
immobility forced him to focus his energies intellectually rather than physically.

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