DESIGNS IN GATTACA

People seem to remember Gattaca as the sequence where Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman started their real life relationship rather than focusing on the movie itself. But despite poor reception on 1997, decade later the growing popularity as the one of the classic sci-fi movie from late 90’s has proven Gattaca its re-watchable value. I was another one in the wave of people who later discover this film (decade later). Last week I was searching indefinitely for futuristic movie with interesting plot through the every list I can find on the internet. It turned out Gattaca was on almost every one of them (along with The Fifth Element, Blade runner). What seems most appealing to me, rather than highly acclaimed storyline, is the art direction and design in the film. If you have seen this movie already, I bet you would agree with me about the art composition appeared in the film from costumes, architecture, lighting hues and those futuristic inventions like 1950 cars with hi-tech engine sound and swimming treadmill and so forth. Every bit of these fragment are enough to make the movie so gorgeous to me. Kudos to Andrew Niccol and his cinematographer, Slawomir Idziak.

Like most of dystopia plots, the film is dated in near-future (as for the fact the movie was created in 1997, it can nearly assumable that it is the year of now) where social classes are no longer classified by nationalities nor races but, even worse, by DNA. People who were conceived naturally are considered to be weak and less important while people who were born technically engineered are elite and obviously stronger. This must have something to do with George Orwell’s 1984, a pure dystopian masterpiece and a taste of Alphaville for the sci-fi-noir value (precisely, wiki stated this film as tech-noir) To add up to film noir style, instead of putting beyond-imagination designs like many of Spielberg’s, the film adopted the contemporary designs from 20th century such as turbine cars and Frank Lloyd Wright’s futurism architecture.

Back to the plot again. Vincent (Ethan Hawke), a young man who was born naturally, was doomed to be low class labor in the society due to advance biotechnology that stated his heart disease and many difficulties since he was born (Ironically enough, his name was Vincent “Freeman”). Vincent somehow determine to be an astronaut and finally disposed himself from  his bias family to work as a cleaner in space institute called Gattaca.

In Gattaca headquarter (the astronautics company in the movie where it is cleverly named after the genetic component C T G A), the director uses at least three differences locations to shot, one of them is Marin County Civic Center in California design by Frank Lloyd Wright, the father of modern architecture. Astronomer office where Vincent and Irene work is incredibly gorgeous. I’m not sure where exactly it is but it is so clean and minimal that it eliminates human touch in the building, plus the picture of officers working on each desk like robots. The warm yellow light that covers entire film is instead of giving warm feeling it offers neat and cold environment.

Not long after Vincent worked in Gattaca as a cleaner, he found a man who can provide him false identity to become an “Valid” like everyone else. He led Vincent to a man named Jerome Morrow (Jude Law) an athlete runner whose legs paralyzed from car crash, unwillingly trade his “Identity” (everything that contain DNA like blood, urine, contact-lense etc) for money. Vincent used his named and everything else to apply as an astronaut in Gattaca an officially and easily become Jerome Morrow, ready to depart to a mission in Titan. They later became friends.

The exterior shots of Jerome/Eugene apartment used CLA Building on the campus of California State Polytechnic University. I can notice the winding stairs, intentionally or not, resembles to DNA structure. This therefore continually supports the genetic concept.

CLA Building on the campus of California State Polytechnic University as exterior shots of Eugene's apartment

After the mission director was mysteriously murdered, there are investigators crawling all over the institute, collecting samples of everything they find in the scene, find out who they belongs to. Vincent, unfortunately dropped his (real) eye-lash, became murder suspect and he must use all his wits to get out of this, all for his Saturn mission.

Uma Thurman or Irene in the story is so genuinely perfect for the setting and costumes. Her blonde hair strictly coiled at the back, wearing plain grey uniform goes together with exclusively-designed brassiere that cling underneath the collar adds some feminist/perfectionist look. While all the male characters are all in 50’s inspired dapper look with clean-cut hair. Ethan Hawke and Jude Law at best!


One remarkable scene in this movie is the solar cell scene. In this scene Vincent (now as a first-class navigator aka Jerome Morrow) and Irene, his colleague was at the end of their date. Irene took him to see something amazing before dawn breaks. She took him to the sea of solar system plants gleaming the very first sunlight of the day. But Vincent, not wearing his contact lenses, was not able to fully witness the beauty. This scene should be classic in my opinion. People who watch this film usually mention it. It is possibly because it was the only romantic scene in the film. The solar cell plants depict the near-future as they suggest that soon the sea of solar cell plants will become more common source of energy. Artistically this is very creative bringing out the somber feeling at dawn. The light and the minimal composition nothing else but he and she and the sunlight reflecting all over the place.

I can go on forever but let me stop here before it gets too long. There are so many things to talk about in this film apart from design and stuff. Sorry for not covering all the details in plots. This movie is surely very underrate. It is not regular cloning thriller. It is the story of a fighting spirit defying his fate, friendship and competition, all under intelligent narration. Classics in my book.