Don't be a Plum!
sometimes people really piss me off…. so then I watch a movie

• 26 January 2010

I really loved this movie, and I’ll tell you why. It follows a guy who does whatever he needs to do to follow his dreams. People tell him he can’t and that he’s not perfect or he doesn’t have the potential to do what he wants to do, and he just does it anyways.

It is starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman and Jude Law. They’re members of this futuristic world where everyone’s genes have been chosen for them before they are even born. Some people’s parents have the money to make perfect kids with their doctors, and some parents don’t. People who don’t have perfect genes are discriminated against, like how today there is racism or xenophobia. Ethan Hawke is named Vincent, and he has always dreamed of being an astronaut at the space station called Gattaca. He can’t get in even though he works very hard because he wasn’t born perfect. He has a high percentage of risk for heart problems and no one would take that risk on training him if he was going to have health problems.

So, he becomes a “borrowed ladder.”  He takes on the genetic identity of another person who has a perfect genome. That person is played by Jude Law and his name is Jerome Morrow. So, Jerome gives Vincent samples of his blood, fingerprints, urine, hair, skin, and everything Vincent needs to pass substance tests and to make people think he is Jerome Morrow. Then, when he has someone else’s genes, he can use his own brain and talent to move up and follow his dreams.

But that’s just the beginning of the movie. The movie is about how Vincent almost loses his dream of going on a mission in space because the police think he has committed a crime. And also he falls in love with Uma Thurman, so there is a lot of drama that he has to go through but he has to stay focused on his dream and make it a reality.

I like to watch this movie whenever I get discouraged about something, because it helps me to see that you really can do whatever you want to do, if you just work hard enough and stay focused on what you’re doing. My favorite quote of the movie is:

Director Josef: “We have to ensure that people are meeting their potential.”
Investigator: “Not exceeding it?”
Director Josef: “No one exceeds his potential.”
Investigator: “If he did?”
Director Josef: “It means that we did not accurately guage his potential in the first place.”

It’s something we should all think about.

-Plum

picture from extraneousflickassery.files.wordpress.com

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