For last week’s movie screening, we watched Gattica, a movie about a man and his ambition to go to space despite his losing edge in the gene pool. The workers of Gattica only consist of people with near perfect genes, meaning that they were not prone to diseases, had good physical attributes, long lives, etc,. However, a man by the name of Vincent, whose parents decided not to give him the edge of bioengineering, lives the life of a ‘normal’ person by letting chance decide the makeup of his genes. And it is precisely this that bars him from achieving this goal to fly to space.

I thought that this was interesting how society progressed to a point where people needed to have superior genes to be eligible for a job like that. In addition, I think this movie shows how the power and influence of one’s work ethic, along with motivation is enough to offset the competitive edge that other people have. The fact that no one ever knew that Vincent had inferior genes since he lived under the life of Jerome proved that it wasn’t Vincent’s genes that stopped him from achieving his goals, but it was the standards that society wanted to preserve. I also found this movie to be a bit more emotional and sad that I expected it to. Jerome’s sacrifice at the end of the movie when he cremated himself in the very chamber that Vincent would go to to rid himself of his inferior genes stood out a lot to me. Despite not being able to achieve his own goals, Jerome let someone else use his identity to help achieve their goals. I definitely felt bad for Jerome, but I think this movie shows that natural born talent isn’t the only thing that makes someone successful. It’s the hard work and effort that counts.