Gattaca

Science tells us what to believe and what not to believe. But perhaps even the highly unlikely 1% is worth pursuing. After all life is full of contingency and indeterminacy. If we do not allow any room for chances and flukes in addition to demonstrable scientific evidence, we are only fooling ourselves.

The film explores the ethical questions about the limit of genetic predilection and the consequences when we allow genetics to dictate our belief and social organization. Jerome Morrow has the perfect genetic makeups but he's crippled in real life whereas Vincent has congenital heart problems but he works very hard to maximize his potentials towards realizing his dream of joining the space mission program "Gattaca". The non-negotiable policy of only allowing the best genetic composition to join the space mission motivates Vincent to assume the identity of Jerome. He realized his dream in the end but only as an impostor. The problem rests with the blind belief in extreme genetic superiority, excluding any consideration of epigenetic factors such as accidents (Jerome's 'perfect' genome cannot predict traffic accident), and miracles (Vincent's 'defective'' genome cannot stop his strong will power).

No wonder Lou likes this so much, Vincent and Jerome in the movie are modeled after the same genetic line. The two individuals with drastically different genes, upbringings, appearances, aspirations pretend to live under the cloak of the same set of genetic materials. In a sense, they are fraudulent identical twins. They fell in love with the same woman: Irene, and the same sport: swimming. Other than that, the genetic shell they carry over did not determine their different outlooks in life. One of the take-home messages is that people who share or pretend to share the same genetic materials are not prisoners of their genes. Life is not just a bundle of genes. Jane put it wonderfully in her award-winning book Whose View of Life? , "But the genome is nothing without the organisms. DNA maybe interchangeable from one organism to another, or even from a laboratory dish, but DNA is just the beginning."

This film was produced in 1997, a nice reflection of the "century of the gene" as the twentieth century is characterized. That century is over, and gone too is the simplistic emphasis on the gene and on genomics as the path to truth and life. Jane said "we are moving into a century of the organism, an era in which we will embrace the complexities of interactions."