Gattaca: Fave Quotes

My level of interest for Gattaca is so profound that I am rather familiar with the scripts, much less the very meaningful and memorable quotes. I have been quoting these here and there, but I have never consolidated the quotes I liked. Here is an excerpt:

The 3 quotes above were the main motivation for me to work hard to and step out of my underclass status. OK, maybe I did not work as hard as Vincent did, or as hard as I should. But when the going get tough, these are the lines that pushed me on.

More importantly, if we were to live like today’s the last day of our lives, then I did not see why I should save anything for the trip back.

10 fingers, 10 toes, that’s all that used to matter.

Vincent Freeman, Gattaca

As I grew older, and as the reality of the society dawns upon me, the 2 quotes above were quite a realization for me, especially in the context of this city and system that we are living in. In fact, I began to feel like Gattaca is the metaphor for Gattaca!

First, of course, is how the meritocracy had cultivated a generation of competitors. Of course, there will always be those who could not make the cut. They either fall out, or they try to win by bringing others down (either in spite, with the ‘Lose-Lose’ mentality, or in the hope that by bringing others down, they could be comparatively better). And as more and more people start to lose faith in this system (well, people do improve over time, thereby putting in place a new measure of standards), the psyche began to skew towards trying desperately to win.

In the end, we are evolving into a society looking for flaws in others, for better or for worse.

And of course, it used to be that we are citizens by virtue of birth in the country. But our public policies had it that being born in this country is not ‘citizen’ enough. You had to be born under certain circumstances, to the tune of the government. How does that feel?

It just means that we did not accurately measure his potential in the first place.

Director Josef, Gattaca

This post has been republished from my old blog.

If you like this post, please Like and Share it with your friends. You can also read more about why I like Gattaca, or read about my take on Hidden Figures.