Gattaca

Visible crew/equipment: When Ethan Hawke is picking out a suit and shoes, you see a distinct hand on the left side of the closet holding up what must be a false wall. (00:33:25)

Continuity mistake: When Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman are escaping form the party, the sleeve of Ethan's suit is ripped under the armpits when he hits the cop but in a few seconds you see his sleeve completely fixed. (01:11:40)

Revealing mistake: When Jude Law needs to pull himself up the flight of stairs to reach the intercom, you can see him use his hips, despite the fact that he is paralyzed from the waist down.

More mistakes in Gattaca

Trivia: In the Gattaca world, people like Vincent who fake their genetic profile are known as borrowed ladders. This is a reference to the double helix, or ladder shape, of DNA.

Trivia: One of the biggest themes in this film is DNA and how it can be used (and misused) to give information about people. It's interesting that the name 'Gattaca' is spelled using only the letters which stand for the four nucleotide bases which comprise DNA: guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine. The word GATTACA looks like a short sequence of DNA.

Trivia: The staircase in the house of the real Jerome Morrows is actually a resemblance of a DNA structure. Similar to Watson and Crick's model, except for the fact that the staircase has a right-handed turn. The DNA helix is a left-handed turn.

Vincent: 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.

Jerome: We have to get drunk immediately.

Question: In the scene where Vincent is just about to launch, the doctor testing him mentions his son. My brother seems to think that the doctor knows Vincent is not who he pretends to be because he is Jerome Morrow's father. Is there any evidence for this?

Answer: None whatsoever. The doctor seems to have worked out that Vincent is not who he seems to be from simple observational evidence. It's because of his son that he feels sympathy for Vincent and hasn't revealed that he's tricking the system.

Tailkinker

Question: How exactly does the device that Vincent uses on his legs to make him taller work?

Answer: The leg bones are fractured completely across, at a location between the rings of the device. Thereafter, while the bones are knitting back together, the device is periodically adjusted to drag the bones away from each other a fraction of an inch. The bones continue to grow toward each other to close the gap, gradually lengthening. It is an astoundingly painful way to add height.

Rooster of Doom

Question: When 'Jerome' has his blood tested with the syringe, and jumps up pretending to be in pain, he puts his own test tube down on the trolley, but the sample from his arm was in the syringe; why does the doctor not realise that it's not his? Is he in on it, or is the syringe suppose to be filling from the test tube, like the finger print capsules?

Bryn Charles

Chosen answer: Jerome does a little sleight of hand, switching the vials.

Greg Dwyer

More questions & answers from Gattaca

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