A recommendation for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_gardener
Oct. 25th, 2005 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersRecently in a thread about the best SF movies, the_gardener wrote, "Gattaca, on the other hand, is a genuine original. So original that no one else seems (yet) to have done anything like it!"
This gives me yet another opportunity in my ongoing crusade to recommend Code 46 far and wide, and high and low, till the genetically modified cows come home. It's my favorite SF movie of the past five years, vying for that honor with Mamoru Oshii's Avalon. Code 46 is an independent film directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Samantha Morton and Tim Robbins. It played the festival circuit in 2003, and then it got a token release to theaters last year. It actually played for two weeks in Seattle, at two different tiny theaters, so I got to see it twice on the (relatively) big screen. I've watched the DVD once since then.
Like Gattaca, it's about genetics and about winners and losers (or insiders and outsiders) in a dystopic brave new world. However, my complaint about Gattaca was that it had the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and Code 46 actually manages to recomplicate its premise in much more interesting ways. Partly this is because it doesn't over-explain its world-building. There are little bits -- like the car wash that all vehicles pass through when coming into Shanghai, or the way the characters hold a coat over their heads as they run through the sunshine -- that we are left to interpret on our own. The movie trusts our common heritage of dystopias to help us understand.
The central dilemma of the story is based on a famous Greek tragedy. Again, it isn't discussed by the characters themselves, so the audience must wrestle with the implications themselves. The basic scenario is that an insurance investigator from Seattle arrives in Shanghai to investigate the forgery of "papelles" -- an official document, something like a passport, that allows people access to specific privileges. He has a fling with a young woman he meets, and then things get complicated.
Aside from the fact that it's a beautifully produced movie with great performances and clever dialogue (and funny throw-away bits like Mick Jones singing a karaoke version of "Should I Stay Or Should I Go"), the thing I like the most about it is that it respects my intelligence. It's very fannish that way, and very rare in SF film. The one false move comes at the very end, when a Cold Play song is wheeled out to sell soundtracks. Other than that, it takes up Gattaca's challenge of creating intelligent, thoughtful, small-scale SF (with not even one explosion!), and it does it even better.
One other note: as appropriate to a movie about genetics, it involves some relatively in-your-face (but not graphic) scenes of sex, including some strangely discomfitting nudity. Now if that doesn't sell you on it ...
the_gardener wrote, "Gattaca, on the other hand, is a genuine original. So original that no one else seems (yet) to have done anything like it!"This gives me yet another opportunity in my ongoing crusade to recommend Code 46 far and wide, and high and low, till the genetically modified cows come home. It's my favorite SF movie of the past five years, vying for that honor with Mamoru Oshii's Avalon. Code 46 is an independent film directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Samantha Morton and Tim Robbins. It played the festival circuit in 2003, and then it got a token release to theaters last year. It actually played for two weeks in Seattle, at two different tiny theaters, so I got to see it twice on the (relatively) big screen. I've watched the DVD once since then.
Like Gattaca, it's about genetics and about winners and losers (or insiders and outsiders) in a dystopic brave new world. However, my complaint about Gattaca was that it had the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and Code 46 actually manages to recomplicate its premise in much more interesting ways. Partly this is because it doesn't over-explain its world-building. There are little bits -- like the car wash that all vehicles pass through when coming into Shanghai, or the way the characters hold a coat over their heads as they run through the sunshine -- that we are left to interpret on our own. The movie trusts our common heritage of dystopias to help us understand.
The central dilemma of the story is based on a famous Greek tragedy. Again, it isn't discussed by the characters themselves, so the audience must wrestle with the implications themselves. The basic scenario is that an insurance investigator from Seattle arrives in Shanghai to investigate the forgery of "papelles" -- an official document, something like a passport, that allows people access to specific privileges. He has a fling with a young woman he meets, and then things get complicated.
Aside from the fact that it's a beautifully produced movie with great performances and clever dialogue (and funny throw-away bits like Mick Jones singing a karaoke version of "Should I Stay Or Should I Go"), the thing I like the most about it is that it respects my intelligence. It's very fannish that way, and very rare in SF film. The one false move comes at the very end, when a Cold Play song is wheeled out to sell soundtracks. Other than that, it takes up Gattaca's challenge of creating intelligent, thoughtful, small-scale SF (with not even one explosion!), and it does it even better.
One other note: as appropriate to a movie about genetics, it involves some relatively in-your-face (but not graphic) scenes of sex, including some strangely discomfitting nudity. Now if that doesn't sell you on it ...
