Gattaca Columbia Pictures, 112 minutes. Cert. 15
'Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked?' (Ecclesiastes 7.13) - the text is used on screen at the beginning of this timely science fiction film, in the mould of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The audience is invited to consider the evidence before them . . .
Ethan Hawke is Vincent - a naturally conceived yet sickly child, compared to his brother Anton - a son who has been artificially conceived and the chosen foetus among several in the quest to eliminate genetically inferior traits. However, as Vincent grows, his one ambition is to fly on a space mission, and this becomes his all-consuming aim. He begins work at the space agency 'Gattaca' as a grade G cleaner. Yet he is driven to the extent that he is sold the genetic identity of Jerome, a healthy high-flyer who has been crippled, played by Jude Law. Vincent has to undertake painful surgeries and trick the constant genetic ID tests in order to fully assume Jerome's identity - and to fulfil his ambition for space flight. His new identity is soon in jeopardy when a murder is committed, and the premises of Gattaca are scoured for DNA evidence of anyone listed as 'in-valid'.
The film creates a 'politically correct' vision not of an Aryan state, but of elite workers including women, black and Asian people. But while modern mankind searches for political correctness in a trendy wave of general thinking, how close are geneticists pushing us towards a time when newborns are increasingly the 'chosen' foetuses, where grades of human 'perfection' determine our value in society? Aldous Huxley warned of such tampering in his foreboding novel. However, as Christians we have to humble ourselves to remember our own imperfections, and to recognise that those 'who trespass against us'- whatever positions they hold - are also members of a fallen human race. Our human weaknesses are those which God loves to use as strengths.
