Beginning and Ending Scenes Show a Theme in Gattaca

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Goal: Analyse how the beginning and ending scenes work together to develop one or more ideas in a visual text you have studied. In the film Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol, the beginning and ending scene use film techniques in a connected way that links them. This linking of the opening and closing scenes helps develops the idea- we can reach beyond our circumstances. The film techniques in the opening scene reveal to the audience a cramped and prison-like world. The first images we see are extreme close ups of parts of Vincent, the main character, magnified as they fall from the sky against an artificial blue lit background. The camera then zooms out to more extreme close ups as he shaves his neck. We see parts of his body behind bars and the shots get progressively further away as we see him cramped in a tiny room behind bars painstakingly cleaning himself. Subsequently we see a full shot of him outside the room in a bathrobe as he burns what he has left inside. Finally there are close up shots of blood and urine samples as we see Vincent strapping the urine sample to his thigh, putting blood into a fake finger tip and gluing the finger tip onto his own. This artificial and clinical blue lighting, extreme close up and close up images reveal to the audience immediately that Vincent is affected greatly by his body, imprisoned by it perhaps. It seems as if he is in need to ridding himself of any samples of himself that might accidentally float off; perhaps his DNA requires camouflaging? These very close up film techniques introduce the audience to a cramped and prison-like world in the opening scene because the world in the film is a world where people are trapped by their bodily DNA. Despite this, the main character Vincent, who has inferior DNA, desires to reach beyond these imprisoning circumstances, an important idea in the film. As the opening scene

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