How To Predict the Future
In appreciation of Gattaca, Eternal Sunshine, Nosedive, and 2081
Comrades: The best SciFi movies are about humanity.
Gattaca is as close to perfection as any movie ever made. The visuals and soundtrack are hauntingly beautiful. Ethan Hawke, Jude Law, and Uma Thurman are at their primes playing memorable characters with a strong supporting cast. Plot twists and subtle details give you goosebumps and an even greater appreciation when rewatching the film. Through shared grit and excellence people pull for each other, even when the system is set up to divide them. Sound familiar?
Gattaca is full of incredible quotes:
“For the genetically superior, success is easier to attain but it is by no means guaranteed. After all, there is no gene for fate.”
“I never saved anything for the swim back.”
“They used to say that a child conceived in love has a greater chance of happiness. They don't say that anymore… I'll never understand what possessed my mother to put her faith in God's hands, rather than her local geneticist… I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of my skin. No, we now have discrimination down to a science.”
“Jerome had been engineered with everything he needed to get into Gattaca, except the desire to do so… he never suffered from the routine discrimination of a utero, a faith-birth, or in-valid as we were called… I was now a member of a relatively new and particularly detested segment of society, one of those who refuses to play the hand that he was dealt. I was what is commonly known as a borrowed ladder or a de-generate.”
“I got the better end of the deal. I only lent you my body. You lent me your dream.”
“I was never more certain of how far away I was from my goal than when I was standing right beside it.”
“If you're going to pretend like you don't care, don't look up.”
“For future reference, right-handed men don't hold it with their left. Just one of those things.”
“For someone who was never meant for this world, I must confess I'm suddenly having a hard time leaving it. Of course, they say every atom in our bodies was once part of a star. Maybe I'm not leaving... maybe I'm going home."
Like Gattaca, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind creates a familiar but distinct world with a one-of-a-kind screenplay and music. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are at their best with an ensemble cast. Love, joy, pain, memory, regret… was it all a dream? The quintessential film about the raw human experience.
“Meet me in Montauk...”
“Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating.”
“I could die right now... I’m just so happy. I’ve never felt that before. I’m just exactly where I want to be.”
“Are we like those bored couples you feel sorry for in restaurants? Are we the dining dead?”
“You can erase someone from your mind. Getting them out of your heart is another story.”
“Well technically it is brain damage.”
“Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it? What Howard gives to the world? To let people begin again. It’s beautiful, you look at a baby and it’s so pure, and so free, and so clean, and adults are like this mess of sadness and phobias, and Howard just makes it all go away.”
“How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.”
Nosedive is by far the best episode of Black Mirror. It has only gotten better with time as the world has plunged deeper into dystopian Instagram social credit systems. The DGAF mentality at the end is what we all strive for.
2081 is the least well known of this group, but packs the hardest punch. It is a short film based on Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron. The opening lines below say it all. I recommend signing up for free access at the official site here. Meanwhile, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has introduced diversity quotes for films to be considered for the Oscars. 2081 nailed everything except the timeline, as Handicapper Generals aka DIE-BJ Karens are bringing every institution to its knees in 2022.
“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law, you see. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. And all this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of the United States Handicapper General. The strong wore weights to make them weaker. The intelligent wore earpieces that kept them from taking unfair advantage of their brains. Even the beautiful sometimes wore masks in situations where their beauty might simply be too distracting. It was the Golden Age of Equality.”
First I must apologize, for by now, ‘love’ may be considered a term of hate speech. It seems that in a world of enforced equality, there is little room for love, or any strong motivation. Excellence has been ruled out before hand, growth is narrowly constrained.
A better term for ‘equity’ (equality of outcomes) is entropy, or heat death, the dispersal of all energy, after which nothing can happen, and there is nothing left to care.
Morning Tovarisch! Your choices are excellent fictional commentary on the present human condition. I would like to hear your thoughts on the best documentary. My choice: Idiocracy.