Gattaca (1997)

Gattaca (1997)

In New Zealand-born, British writer/director Andrew Niccol's futuristic, dramatic sci-fi thriller (his debut feature film) - it was a thought-provoking and cautionary fable-tale about the sleek, not-so-distant, well-ordered and functioning technological future where eugenics (the science of one's hereditary DNA genetic makeup) before birth pre-determined one's future and social class. Discrimination was based upon the profiling of one's genetic code and DNA defects. It examined bio-ethical questions, the concepts of fate and destiny, and efforts to overcome genetic bias in order to seek preferred employment and placement in the society. The film's tagline reflected the theme: "There is no gene for the human spirit."

The film provided a social critique of the dystopian future's genetically-enhanced social class system, where would-be parents eliminated undesirable flaws and traits of their offspring by tampering with genetic engineering to control such things as the likelihood of disease, baldness, body size, eyesight, personality or the life expectancy of their progeny. The system gave an unfair advantage to parents whose children were conceived naturally and traditionally and not pre-determined, resulting in a flawed underclass of "in valids." The main protagonist in the film was able to prove to everyone that even though he was unenhanced, he was able to perform as a superior individual. He escaped his genetically predetermined fate and became a "Freeman" - his actual name. The name of his alter ego Jerome Eugene Morrow was also highly significant. Jerome (similar to genome), Eugene (or eugenics) and Morrow (referring to the future).

The title of the film was derived from the first letter of the four nitrogen bases of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid): Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine (G,A,T,C). The four letters are also frequently emphasized in the film - the letters were bolded in the opening and closing credits, and in the names of the people and companies. On a budget of 36ドル million, the film was a big failure, taking in only 12ドル.5 million at the box-office. It was nominated for a single Academy Award: Best Art Direction.

• the film opened with two title-card quotes (white letters on a black background):
  • "Consider God's handi-work; who can straighten what He hath made crooked?" Ecclesiastes 7:13
  • "I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to." Willard Gaylin
• during the opening credits presented with symbolic meaning, in slow-motion, large elephant tusks loudly tumbled onto the ground against a blue background; they were followed by branchless, palm-like trunks and other pieces of debris; gradually, the objects were revealed to be highly-magnified, scoured cells that were floating down like snow - hair follicles, nail clippings, whiskers, and shredded flakes of skin
• in a futuristic bathroom shower room (a stainless steel tank), a naked man was shaving with a strait-edged razor and rubbing his skin raw with a wire brush; after thoroughly grooming and scrubbing himself, all of his exfoliated debris was afterwards incinerated in the sealed tank; from a liquid-nitrogen cooled refrigerator, the individual removed from one of its shelves an IV-attached silicon pouch containing a yellowish liquid (a urine bag) that he strapped to his upper thigh; he then prepared a slim, fingertip-sized pad (complete with a sachet containing injected blood) to cover one of his fingers and blend with his skin color
• he then drove from his condominium complex's parking garage to a sterile, modernistic building - the Gattaca Aerospace Corporation, a space agency similar to NASA, where he entered onto an escalator with hundreds of other similarly well-dressed employees wearing identical black suits; a subtitle appeared: "THE NOT-TOO-DISTANT FUTURE"; "Jerome Morrow" (Ethan Hawke) entered a restricted area with a computerized finger pin-prick identification security system, followed by co-worker Irene Cassini (Uma Thurman) - a possible future romantic partner; at his computer monitor and work-station in a sterile, cold, antiseptic room with dozens of other terminals, "Jerome" viewed an animation of a Gattaca spacecraft in deep space, and then used a mini-vac to clean between the keys of his computer keyboard; his boss Director Josef (Gore Vidal), the Gattaca flight director, noted his obsessive cleanliness and error-free work, and reminded the thriving "Jerome" of another "substance test" a week before his scheduled manned, one-year space-mission to Saturn's moon Titan as a celestial navigator
• to hide his own DNA from the inspection, "Jerome" surreptitiously and fraudulently emptied the contents of a small vial of someone else's dead skin tissue onto his keyboard and placed a single hair follicle onto his hair comb; in the testing laboratory, white-coated technician Lamar (Xander Berkeley) observed carefully as "Jerome" cleverly provided a urine sample from the hidden pouch strapped to his leg, and as he often did, complimented "Jerome" on the size of his penis: ("You've got a beautiful piece of equipment there, Jerome")
• the urinalysis confirmed that the sample was VALID - that "Jerome" was Jerome Morrow - it also revealed a photo of the 'real' Jerome Morrow whom genetically-inferior Vincent Freeman (also Ethan Hawke) was impersonating
• after gazing up at one of many Gattaca launches, a voice-over narration by Vincent provided a lengthy back-story to the plot - he admitted that he was not Jerome Morrow: "The most unremarkable of events. Jerome Morrow, Navigator First Class, is about to embark on a one-year manned mission to Titan, the 14th moon of Saturn. A highly prestigious assignment. Although, for Jerome, selection was virtually guaranteed at birth. He's blessed with all the gifts required for such an undertaking. A genetic quotient second to none. No, there's truly nothing remarkable about the progress of Jerome Morrow. Except that I am not Jerome Morrow"
• in a flashback with voice-overs, Vincent described how he had been conceived after his Catholic parents Marie (Jayne Brook) and Antonio Freeman (Elias Koteas) had sex in the backseat of a Buick Riviera in Detroit; he would normally be considered a completely healthy baby (with "ten fingers, ten toes"), but a post-birth test with a drop of blood immediately revealed flaws - Vincent had a heart disorder and it was predetermined that he would live only until the age of 30: "(voice-over) I was conceived in the Riviera. Not the French Riviera. The Detroit variety. They used to say that a child conceived in love has a greater chance of happiness. They don't say that anymore. I never understand what possessed my mother to put her faith in God's hand rather than those of her local geneticist. Ten fingers, ten toes, that's all that used to matter. Not now. Now only seconds old, the exact time and cause of my death was already known. Neurological condition, 60% probability. Manic depression, 42% probability. Attention deficit disorder, 89% probability. Heart disorder - 99% probability. Early fatal potential. Life expectancy, 30.2 years"
• during his growing-up years, young Vincent (Mason Gamble and Chad Christ) was "chronically ill"; unlike himself, his younger brother Anton Freeman Jr. (Vincent Nielson and William Lee Scott) was born two years later after Vincent's parents consulted with a genetic counselor (Blair Underwood) to have their second child born in what had become "the natural way" - without anything left to chance; genetic selection insured a healthy boy with no imperfections or pre-dispositions to any of the major inheritable diseases or other potentially prejudicial conditions: ("...premature baldness, myopia, alcoholism and addictive susceptibility, propensity for violence and obesity"); the geneticist-counselor recommended: "You want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection built in already. Your child doesn't need any additional burdens"; he also assured them : "This child is still you. Simply the best of you"; genetically-perfect Anton, favored by his father, would always surpass young Vincent's normal abilities (regarding growth, physical strength, intelligence, eyesight, etc.)
• Vincent's voice-over continued as he described how during a game of "chicken" at the beach between the two boys, they would swim out as far as they could into the ocean ("It was about who would get scared and turn back first") - and Vincent always lost the contest due to his genetic inferiority: ("Of course it was always me. Anton was by far the stronger swimmer and he had no excuse to fail")
• as the flashback continued about Vincent's interest in science and his dream to become a space traveler-astronaut at Gattaca, a view was shown of a deserted parking lot with his mapped-out representation of the solar system (a large red ball represented the sun, and other smaller objects served as the planets stretching out), "Jerome" explained: "For as long as l can remember, I've dreamed of going into space"; during dinner one night, his mother cautioned about his physical condition: "You have to be realistic, with a heart condition like yours...", while his father bluntly added: "The only way that you'll see the inside of a spaceship is if you are cleaning it"
• "Jerome" confirmed his father's statement that he was doomed to merely be a lower class citizen whose future solely depended upon his DNA makeup and genotype profiling: "My real resume was in my cells. Why should anybody invest all that money to train me when there are a thousand other applicants with a far cleaner profile?"; he also noted how such discrimination was illegal, but ignored: ("Of course, it's illegal to discriminate. 'Genoism' it's called. But no one takes the law seriously"); he was destined to fail at any attempt to succeed at the higher tier of employment under the unfair social class system;
• then one day at the ocean shore, 17 year-old Vincent's younger brother Anton declined to become "blood-brothers" with him; however, he did accept Vincent's challenge to swim in the open sea against him - and surprisingly lost, and Vincent had to save Anton from drowning; after that, Vincent was determined to succeed, knowing that he wasn't as weak as everyone believed: ("It was the moment that made everything else possible"); he tore himself out of a framed family portrait and permanently left the Freeman household with a suitcase; he roamed around the country, taking various menial jobs, usually at the inferior janitorial level due to his "In Valid" status: (voice-over: "I belong to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin....we now have discrimination down to a science")

• Vincent was hired to work at Gattaca as part of the cleaning crew to clean office spaces, supervised by Caesar (Ernest Borgnine); during his many hours at work, he described how he often longingly watched rocket ships launched into the skies: ("I was never more certain that how far away I was from my goal, than when I was standing right beside it"); Vincent began to realize that intense physical training and academic study of celestial navigation wasn't enough; he had to take drastic measures to beat the system - by assuming the identity of a "Valid": ("From my brave talk, I knew it was just that. No matter how much l trained or how much I studied, the best test score in the world wasn't gonna matter unless I had the blood test to go with it. I made up my mind to resort to more extreme measures")
• Vincent was visited by a DNA broker known as German (Tony Shaloub), who offered to help him attain his career objectives, but cautioned - "The commitment is binding"; in voice-over, Vincent explained how he could improve his status by illegally borrowing, buying or acquiring the "genetic identity" of an elite individual, and impersonate or pose himself as that person in order to pass the rigorous DNA tests: "For the genetically superior, success is easier to attain but is by no means guaranteed. After all, there is no gene for fate. And when, for one reason or another, a member of the elite falls on hard times, their genetic identity becomes a valued commodity for the unscrupulous. One man's loss is another man's gain"
• Vincent was introduced to a now-paralyzed (from the waist down) ex-Silver Medalist swimmer named Jerome Eugene Morrow (Jude Law), a genetically-perfect individual (with 20/20 vision, a high IQ, with a long life expectancy) who was willing to sell his genetically-superior DNA identity to Vincent brokered through German who would take a 25% cut: ("You could go anywhere with this guy's helix tucked under your arm"); paraplegic Jerome had suffered a broken back in an unpublicized car accident (Jerome deliberately stepped out in front of the car) that left him an embittered, alcoholic invalid in a wheelchair, yet according to German, "he's still a working, talking, fully productive member of society"; Jerome felt cheated that even with his perfect genes, he should have been a first-place winning champion swimmer
• in voice-over, Vincent described the process of assuming the perfect persona of Jerome: "So began the process of becoming Jerome" - Vincent would acquire Jerome's genetic "markers" of hair, dead skin, blood and urine with specimen-samples and even recordings of his heart-rate; one major stumbling block was the difference in their heights (Jerome was 6 foot 1 inch), and Vincent had to reluctantly agree to have surgery on his legs and increase his height from 4 feet 6 inches with a painful leg operation; adjustments were also made to Vincent's eyes and teeth, and southpaw Vincent spent hours practicing writing Jerome's signature with his right hand; Jerome asked that he be called by his middle name Eugene; before putting their plan into place with a job interview, there were problems with the testing of Jerome's "hot sample" of urine due to his frequent vodka drinking: (Vincent: "There is more vodka in this piss than there is piss!")
• the flashback ended when Vincent passed his job interview (consisting of his first urine test with technician Lamar), and began working at Gattaca, before quickly rising in the ranks by continually fooling the Gattaca computers; after a few years, "Jerome" was currently a week away from the launch date after having been selected as a navigator for a one-year mission; he continued to "dispose of as much loose skin, fingernails and hair as possible to limit how much of my In-Valid self l would leave in the Valid world," while the real Jerome (or Eugene) as a donor continued to supply him with "samples of his own superior body matter" to carry out the "borrowed ladder" DNA deception: (i.e., urine pouches, fingertip blood packets, and vials of other bodily substances); in voice-over, "Jerome" explained how he was paying Eugene's rent to keep his alter ego living his accustomed lavish lifestyle; he had rapidly risen in status in society: "l was now a member of a relatively new and particularly detested segment of society. One of those who refuses to play the hand that he was dealt. I am most commonly known as a 'borrowed ladder,' or a 'de-gene-erate'"
• everything was perfect until the agency's Mission Director was found bloodily murdered - bludgeoned on the head with a computer keyboard: ("Jerome": "Strange to think, he may have more success exposing me in death than he did in life"); as "Jerome" peered down at the body, one of his eyelashes was dislodged and fell onto a narrow window ledge, possibly threatening to disrupt his deceptive plan
• the homicide was investigated by relentless Detective Hugo (Alan Arkin), who with other homicide investigators began to systematically vacuum up bits of human flotsam from keyboards and other areas (including the wayward eyelash from "Jerome"); Director Josef appointed Irene to insist with the investigation; the uneasy "Jerome" was assured by Josef that the case wouldn't affect his launch scheduled for the end of the week; when Eugene heard about the murder, he was fearful that the investigators would place both of them in jeopardy: ("The place is gonna be crawling with Hoovers")
• conducting an informal investigation of her own and interested in "Jerome's" readout, Irene took a sample of a hair follicle from a comb in the desk drawer of "Jerome's" work station, and took it to a public sequencing lab booth for analysis; after requesting a full sequencing, a technician told her that it had a very high 9.3 reading ("Quite a catch!"); she seemed disappointed by both the result and the printout of "Jerome's" counterfeit genetic profile provided on a mini-CD by the lab
• Eugene and "Jerome" went out to a dinner club and got drunk; after returning back in Eugene's condominium, he admitted to "Jerome" that his car accident was self-inflicted and deliberately caused: "I stepped right out in front of it. l'd never been more sober in my life...l couldn't even get that right, could I?"; his suicide attempt was due to his feelings of genetic imperfection after placing second rather than first in the swimming competition

• in the crime lab, "Jerome's" stray eyelash was identifed as originating from an "In-Valid," with a flashing warning: "UNAUTHORIZED SPECIMEN" along with Vincent's picture; lead team investigator Anton (Loren Dean), Vincent's competitive brother, was alerted to the finding and discussed the situation with Detective Hugo, who thought the eyelash "specimen" led them to their suspect - an "unregistered in-valid...a janitor here until a few years back when he disappeared out of sight"; Anton wondered: "Is the janitor gonna come back here after all this time to kill a man he never knew?"; to cover for his brother, Anton told Hugo: "He has no record of any living relative"; he also stated that the Director "was not universally loved" due to cutbacks in the program, so there could be multiple suspects
• in Gattaca's workout room on a treadmill, "Jerome" impressed observers and a trainer (Gabrielle Reece) by his steady heartbeat (masked by a cordless electrode on his chest producing a bogus, metronome-like steady heart-rate), although afterwards due to his true physical frailty, he collapsed in the locker room with a dangerously-elevated heartbeat
• the intrigued Irene admitted to "Jerome" that she checked his sequencing - he did a double-take - and told how she was very impressed, and then confessed to him how she had a personal vulnerability and was imperfect with an "unacceptable likelihood of heart failure" that barred her from any deep-space flight: ("The only trip l'll take in space is around the sun and its satellite right here"); as a come-on, she handed him one of her blonde hairs: "lf you're still interested, let me know"; he deliberately let it drop to the ground
• upon his return to the condo, a very-worried "Jerome" informed Eugene that he was a prime suspect: "They think I killed the Mission Director," and that his eyelash would identify him; although Eugene tried to dissuade him, "Jerome" insisted: "l'm not Jerome Morrow. l'm a murder suspect"; Eugene expressed his disappointment in "Jerome's" panic, destruction of some of the samples, and feelings of guilt: "l could've rented myself out to somebody with a spine, if l'd known you were gonna go belly-up on me at the last f--king gasp! You can't quit on me now. l've put too much into this"
• to avoid suspicion and to keep acting naturally, "Jerome" left for the evening on a date with Irene who was driving her convertible, to attend a piano concert featuring a 12-fingered pianist (Ryan Dorin); meanwhile, Detective Hugo had rounded up suspects from an In-Valid housing project and was testing their blood samples for an eyelash match; during a random search outside his condo, Eugene was blood-tested by a detective (Steve Bessen) and was accurately identifed as Jerome Morrow, a navigator at Gattaca; Eugene claimed he wasn't crippled but had only hurt his leg during training; acting as an elite, he feigned outrage at being questioned and scared off the "flatfoot"
• the perimeters of the drag-net search were closing in everywhere; at a traffic checkpoint with Irene, "Jerome" was able to evade detection by quickly flicking his contact lenses from his eyes; he passed a blood test - pulling up the same screen that came up for Eugene, but then his blurry myopic vision threatened his safety when faced with running across a busy, heavily-trafficked highway to join Irene; he was bravely motivated to take a chance to overcome his defective condition to be with her, and to view a giant set of mirrors at sunrise
• a bag of trash surrendered by Caesar (containing a discarded paper cup used by "Jerome") was a second "positive match" - it identified the same "In-Valid" as the earlier eyelash; Detective Hugo noted: "Two samples, two days. Either the suspect went back to the scene of the crime to get a drink of water, and I don't know anybody that thirsty, or he still works there"; Hugo postulated to Anton: "I have a feeling he might be there under false pretenses, playing somebody else's hand" - a "borrowed ladder at Gattaca"; Hugo suggested: "Maybe he is an impostor, and maybe the director found out about it. That could be his motive," and recommended an intravenous blood test of every employee
• two days before the launch, a blood-testing station was set up inside Gattaca HQs, where Lamar drew blood from "Jerome's" right arm; "Jerome" pretended to flinch and then during the commotion with a sleight-of-hand swapped a concealed vial of blood with the one being used - and was immediately evaluated as "Valid", allowing him to continue to conceal his real identity and prove he wasn't the killer; the Director disallowed Detective Hugo from insisting on holding a second test session for the employees, due to the imminent launch; the suspicious Hugo even questioned the Director himself: "This mission means a great deal to you, doesn't it? And your late colleague opposed it, didn't he?"
• during a date with Irene at the dinner club, she admitted to him: "l'm luckier than most. Not as lucky as some"; when he answered: "l know something about that," she asked - with a double meaning: "What heart problem did you ever have? Did you get yours broken once?"; while dancing with Irene, he told her that he was falling in love with her: "You work so hard, you do everything you can to get away from a place, and when you finally get your chance to leave, you find a reason to stay"
• after dancing together, their romantic evening was interrupted when Hugo and Anton burst into the club's premises to collect samples; they fled out the back door where Vincent beat up a detective (George Marshall Ruge) posted there before they ran away on foot; Irene was surprised she was able to run so far with "Jerome"; from a distance, "Jerome" heard Anton calling out: "Vincent! Vincent!"; in the shadows, Irene turned to "Jerome" and asked: "Who's Vincent?", but then whispered to him: "Don't say anything"; they kissed and later had sex together in Irene's bedroom, surrounded by multiple windows of an ocean beachfront; afterwards, "Jerome" felt shamed by stray hairs left on the bedsheet, and felt compelled to go to the water's edge to scrap his body clean
• the investigation into the Director's death began to close in on "Jerome Morrow" just before his scheduled launch; in Gattaca HQs, Anton asked Irene: "You don't know who he is, do you, lrene?", but she didn't respond one way or the other; Irene privately cautioned "Jerome" to leave and play sick to avoid interrogation, but then Anton forced Irene to accompany him on the drive to "Jerome's" condo to check up on his condition in his home
• in a very tense and dramatic scene, Eugene was alerted to their arrival by "Jerome's" wrist-phone with a request: "Eugene, l need you to be yourself for the day"; to be believable as himself - as Jerome Morrow, Eugene discarded his wheelchair on his condo's ground floor, and then with great effort due to his lifeless legs, he used his arms to pull himself up his spiraling helix-shaped stairs on his stomach to his condo's second level; [Note: This also served as a metaphor about not being able to attain the highest levels in life.] as Anton and Irene entered the front door, Eugene smiled and greeted the confused Irene with: "Hello, sweetheart, where's my kiss?"
• Anton removed a syringe from a test kit and took a blood sample from Eugene's arm - and then immediately analyzed it, confirming that he was indeed Jerome Morrow; the test also simultaneously confirmed for Irene that her real lover "Jerome" was an imposter; fortuitously, Anton was called away when urgently paged by Hugo with news of an arrest: "We have our man, sir....We have him in custody"
• after Anton's hurried departure, "Jerome" emerged from the downstairs - in Irene's presence, revealing that he had been deceiving her all along; "Jerome" asked Eugene: "How the hell did you get up here?", to which Eugene replied: "l can always walk. l've been faking it"; seeing the two together, Irene stared disappointingly at "Jerome" before leaving

• when "Jerome" raced after Irene to explain himself, she was upset: "l don't even know who you are," but he explained to her: "I'm the same person I was yesterday"; she insisted on no more lies: "I can't hear any more of your lies, Jerome"; he confessed to her that he was one of the undesirables, using their common derogatory labels: "Faith Birth," "Defectives," "De-Gene-Erate," "God-child," and the official term: "In-Valids": "My name is Vincent! Vincent Anton Freeman. And l'm a faith birth or a de-gene-erate or whatever you wanna call it. But l am not a murderer"; she asked: "You're a God-child?"; he mentioned how they had one thing in common, a weak heart, although his life-span would be much shorter than hers: "Only I don't have 20 or 30 years left in mine. Mine is already 10,000 beats overdue"; she finally realized that he was seriously and humanly flawed, but had lived longer than anyone had projected and had even proved everyone wrong: "For whatever it's worth, I'm here to tell you that it is possible. It is possible"
• Detective Hugo had acquired a confession from Gattaca's mission director Josef that he had acted alone and had murdered the agency's administrator because he was opposed to the Titan mission and threatened to cancel it; Josef's spit was discovered in the dead director's eye: ("an un-accounted for specimen"); Hugo admitted that he had over-obsessed about an eyelash, and congratulated Anton for having better instincts; with this sudden turn of events, Anton was flabbergasted: "So the ln-Valid had nothing to do with this?"; Hugo explained how Josef had become very "cooperative" and divulged everything, now that the launch couldn't be scrubbed
• although it appeared that "Jerome" was now in the clear, Vincent (or "Jerome") met up with his brother Anton in Gattaca's work-station office; Anton stated how "our parents both died thinking they'd outlived you," although he added that he had his "doubts"; Anton accused his brother of illegalities, including fraud: ("You've gone as far as you can go. You come with me NOW!"), but Vincent insisted he was still preparing to be launched into space, due to his own merits: ("There's still a few million miles left to go...Even you are gonna tell me what I can and can't do now? In case you haven't noticed, l don't need any rescuing. But you did once")
• Anton insisted that he had defeated himself during their last swim and didn't truly need Vincent to rescue him; to prove that he could win, Anton challenged Vincent to another game of "chicken" in the raging surf; but then, as Anton was weakening and faltering during the long swim, he asked about Vincent's strategy and was told: "l never saved anything for the swim back"; as before, Anton began to drown and go under, and had to be rescued by Vincent and brought back to the shore
• early in the morning on the day of the launch, "Jerome" met one last time with Irene, who realized he had nearly killed himself bravely running across the highway to join her; he passed her a plucked follicle of hair and told her: "lf you're still interested, let me know"; she let go of the hair (as he had) and then playfully blamed the wind; they slept together a second time as a goodbye

• after "Jerome" returned to their condo, Eugene revealed to him that he had been stockpiling up DNA genetic samples (of blood, urine, hair, tissue, etc.) in his refrigerators that would last him "two lifetimes" once he came back a year later; "Jerome" cryptically added: "So, Jerome will always be here when you need him" and claimed he would also be "traveling"; in a surprise turn-around, Eugene gratefully thanked "Jerome" for helping him to see his dreams: ("I got the better end of the deal. I only lent you my body. You lent me your dream"); Eugene had begun to believe that Vincent was better at being Jerome Eugene Morrow than Eugene himself
• Eugene also gave "Jerome" a card that wasn't to be opened until he was in outer space ("Not until you're upstairs") - after he had ascended into the heavens
• "Jerome" entered the launch site and was stunned to learn in the departure lounge that there was one more unexpected urine analysis-test for crew members - and he wasn't prepared with a sample; administering the substance test was Lamar; "Jerome" admitted that he had been found out: "Just remember that l was as good as any and better than most...l could have gone up and back. And nobody would've been the wiser"; to his surprise, Lamar told how he praised "Jerome" for inspiring his son (with a genetic defect, who was "not all that they promised") to also apply to become an astronaut; Lamar ignored the disqualifying urinalysis result, marked it as VALID, after hinting that he had known about "Jerome's" deception and true identity for a long time: "For future reference, right-handed men don't hold it with their left"

• as "Jerome" entered the space capsule and a fiery blast of engines launched the rocket, Eugene also entered his condo's home shower-incinerator, and immolated himself after donning his silver swimming medal; after the rocket launched, "Jerome" opened Eugene's card - finding a large hair sample inside
• as before when dancing with Irene, "Jerome" (in a voice-over) expressed sadness about leaving Earth for a year, although he had worked so hard to attain his goal: ("For someone who was never meant for this world, l must confess I'm suddenly having a hard time leaving it"); he mused and wondered to himself: "Of course, they say every atom in our bodies was once part of a star. Maybe l'm not leaving. Maybe l'm going home"; the last image was of his destination (he had reached for the stars in the sky)