God, that's so weird. I loved Gattaca. Strangely enough, some of the stuff you didn't like I thought raised interesting questions.
I'll grant you that Ethan wasn't terribly entralling. His relationship with Jude Law was really the most interesting element in the film - Jude is great in that movie, I thought - but Uma, I felt, represented the bland, superficial gloss of the society Ethan is reaching for. She's pretty, she's perfect, she should be everything he wants on paper... but something's missing, because she doesn't know who he really is or could handle it if she did. And then there's that little niggling voice that reminds you that okay, Uma is genetically perfect, but that doesn't automatically mean she's a bad person... just one who's lived in a sheltered little box, just like the company they work for. She isn't in the same class as Ethan, even though their society would put her above him.
Basically, I thought whole film is all about meeting expectations that are already set, not exceeding ones that have been pre-decided as impossible. That's where I could see the logic for the brother character, boring as he is. He's really only there for that one swimming scene, which I saw as the core of that whole movie - "I never saved anything to get back." So Ethan's character doesn't belong in that universe of predetermined limits and Uma-style lab-test romance - he leaves Earth because he can reach higher than those boxed-in people ever could. I really took away from that story a message about how certain people are able to achieve while others, presumably more talented, don't - it's not about talent as much as will, and that's something the people living in the Gattaca world have lost. In that light, the bland characters seemed to be necessary for contrast.... and I could almost see an argument for Ethan being as bland as he was because he needed to "pass" with them. Jude, however, had become too complex and dark to live in that world either, and so also had to leave... in his case by dying. Like you said, a thoughtful film.
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Date: 2004-09-24 11:31 am (UTC)I'll grant you that Ethan wasn't terribly entralling. His relationship with Jude Law was really the most interesting element in the film - Jude is great in that movie, I thought - but Uma, I felt, represented the bland, superficial gloss of the society Ethan is reaching for. She's pretty, she's perfect, she should be everything he wants on paper... but something's missing, because she doesn't know who he really is or could handle it if she did. And then there's that little niggling voice that reminds you that okay, Uma is genetically perfect, but that doesn't automatically mean she's a bad person... just one who's lived in a sheltered little box, just like the company they work for. She isn't in the same class as Ethan, even though their society would put her above him.
Basically, I thought whole film is all about meeting expectations that are already set, not exceeding ones that have been pre-decided as impossible. That's where I could see the logic for the brother character, boring as he is. He's really only there for that one swimming scene, which I saw as the core of that whole movie - "I never saved anything to get back." So Ethan's character doesn't belong in that universe of predetermined limits and Uma-style lab-test romance - he leaves Earth because he can reach higher than those boxed-in people ever could. I really took away from that story a message about how certain people are able to achieve while others, presumably more talented, don't - it's not about talent as much as will, and that's something the people living in the Gattaca world have lost. In that light, the bland characters seemed to be necessary for contrast.... and I could almost see an argument for Ethan being as bland as he was because he needed to "pass" with them. Jude, however, had become too complex and dark to live in that world either, and so also had to leave... in his case by dying. Like you said, a thoughtful film.