ABSTRACT
In a scene about halfway through the 1998 film Gattaca—Andrew Nic-col’s vision of a genetically engineered future—the naturally born Vincent (Ethan Hawke), posing as the genetically superior Jerome, attends a piano recital with the captivating Irene (Uma Thurman). As the pianist begins to play Schubert’s Impromptu in G-flat D. 899/3, and Vincent and Irene gently flirt, we might become aware that something is out of place. Or, more accurately, we might hear something unusual. This is not the Schubert with which we, as a cinematic audience, may be familiar. After one phrase of the Impromptu, a new, decorated, arpeggiaic descant line appears over the top of Schubert’s melody. As the pianist finishes his recital, he throws his white gloves into the audience. Vincent catches one and passes it to Irene, who slips it on her hand, demonstrating the solution to the mystery: it has an extra finger. As Vincent contemplates a poster of the pianist, one in which his face is entirely covered by his six-fingered hands, Irene asks: “You didn't know?” “Oh yes,” Vincent replies. One cannot help wondering, though, whether the question might be indirectly addressed to the audience. Did we detect that something did not quite ring true about the performance? We might retort in a similar way to Vincent: “Twelve fingers or one, it’s how you play.” Yet, Irene’s response (“That piece can only be played with twelve”) suggests that in this near-future dystopia, Schubert’s G-flat Impromptu is no longer the ten-fingered piece it once was. It is ostensibly the sign of a fictional world forever cut off from our experience of reality, just as surely as the world of privilege denied to the naturally born Vincent.
