How has GATTACA captured and sustained the viewer's interest?.
In the film Gattaca, the director Andrew Niccol uses various techniques to capture, and then retain the viewer's interest throughout the film. Niccol has little to work with, but the basic idea of the film. He effectively uses basic structure and filming techniques with "few special effects" to build viewer interest, and retains it with simple, yet captivating effects. These specifically include miser en scene, camera shots, and lighting.
Mise en scene, or the objects placed in the film, provide the viewer with a fresh, new look world, which despite different, has an eerily strange tone to it. The mixture of eras in the film also adds an attempt at the repeat of fashions. Gattaca has been filmed in the Marin Civic Centre, which is designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The buildings have no corners; they combine straight, clean lines, with subtle curves. Niccol is quoted "To imagine this world to be so pristine, there should be no corners. Dirt has no place to hide." Gattaca shows us a "new" series of classic cars that seem to run electrically. We have all seen these cars before but a long time ago. Nichol's use of older era objects and ideas seems revolutionary in the science fiction category as he does not attempt to predict off-the-wall fashions of the future, he merely takes famous fashions of the past and mixes them to create a new look retro style. This clever mix of time periods convinces the audience that the plot is plausible, and this in turn adds great interest, as it can be believed to be directly related to the viewer, not just an abstract storyline common to many science-fictions.
Spiral staircases are also common in the film. These are significant, as they are used to confer ideas of the double helix, which is the same shape as the DNA molecule, a common thought throughout the film. This symbol is impressively used when paraplegic Eugene struggles up using just his arms in order to save Jerome/Vincent.
