Watching movies isn’t one of the things one can find on my hobbies list. There are a few selected movie franchises that I follow well enough to go to the cinema to watch. I was having a chat with the Editor in Chief when she suddenly said to me, “Can you write a movie review?” I laughed and wondered if she had forgotten how I never spend time watching movies. I thought my laughter would communicate my answer and even though she got my answer she still insisted I write it.
While I was pondering on the assignment, I stumbled on a movie titled Gattaca from 1997. It might seem like an old movie but it’s sure worth spending time watching. The movie starts with a bible verse, “Consider God’s handiwork; who can straighten what he hath made crooked?” Ecclesiastes 7:13, followed by a quote, “I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to,” Willard Gaylin.
At the beginning of the movie, we see a man doing his daily routine of faking his identity. The world has successfully initiated a program of genetically modified children who have no weakness and do not suffer from any sickness. The choice to have a child naturally is there but this brings about discrimination based on science, medical aid, or insurance not covering natural-born babies. There is a class of natural humans and genetically modified ones.
Everyone had to go through tests to get a job and this always meant the natural-born humans were at a disadvantage. For the genetic elite, success was easy to attain but not guaranteed. When a genetically modified being was involved in an accident, their identity became a commodity. The main actor, Vincent, who was naturally born takes up the identity of Jerome who tried to commit suicide but failed and is stuck in a wheelchair. Vincent who had a younger genetically modified brother named after his father Antonio always had the ambition to become an astronaut. He always had swimming competitions with his young brother who was taller than him. He would swim faster all the time except for the very last swim they had right before Vincent set off to go and live his new life away from the family.
The death of one of the executives where Vincent is working brings the police to the company and Vincent’s DNA is found in the office premises. The hunt for Vincent starts and his brother is the one in charge of it. To avoid too many spoiler alerts, I will just skip the de[1]tails. Vincent managed to fly to space with the help of the man in charge of conducting tests at the company. This man had a natural-born child and seeing Vincent achieve all that he did was something that he desired as his child also had ambitions to be great in a world where genetically modified beings had an upper hand.
As I reflected on the quotes at the beginning of the movie, I realized we may be in a similar situation of tampering with Mother Nature. Can we resist the urge to get assistance from science to have better humans or rather in the simplest forms give birth to a set of twins, which many people desire? Scientists are still tempering with Mother Nature and to what extent will the situation get to? Who can straighten what He hath made crooked?
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