Code 46

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Movie
German title Code 46
Original title Code 46
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 2003
length 92 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Michael Winterbottom
script Frank Cottrell Boyce
production Andrew Eaton
music Stephen Hilton , David Holmes
camera Alwin H. Kuchler , Marcel Zyskind
cut Peter Christelis
occupation

Code 46 is a 2003 British science fiction film directed by Michael Winterbottom . The film is a dystopian love story that shows the possible effects of biotechnology .

action

In the near future the earth will be overpopulated and ecologically badly devastated. The population is divided into those who live “inside”, in densely populated cities, physically isolated from “outside” where the poor live. Access to and travel between cities is severely restricted and regulated by visas. (In the film they are called “papeles” - Spanish: “papers” -, a word from the global pidgin language , which contains elements from English , Spanish , French , Italian , Arabic , Farsi and Mandarin .) The inhabitants of the cities walk only go outside at night and stay indoors during the day because sunlight is dangerous to their health, probably because of the destroyed ozone layer . The form of government appears to be authoritarian and society is governed by different codes. The code mentioned in the title prohibits “genetically incestuous reproduction” which has increased due to widespread technologies such as cloning .

Main character is William money from Seattle , the cases of insurance amounted pursues. He is sent to Shanghai to examine employees at The Sphinx, a company that produces insurance coverage documents. William is supposed to find out whether and which employees forge and smuggle documents.

Using a "genetically engineered empathy - Virus " William can not get above information from people when they voluntarily reveal something about themselves. After interviewing many Sphinx employees, he identified a young worker named Maria Gonzalez as the forger of the documents. Maria tells William that she has the same dream each of her birthdays: she takes the subway to meet someone but doesn't know who. Every birthday she is one stop closer to her destination where she expects to meet the person she is looking for. William is tied up by her, and instead of reporting her to security, he names a different employee as the forger. William follows Maria, they have dinner and go to a night club. Maria trusts the man who could arrest her and reveals how she managed to smuggle the documents out of the company. A man named Damian appears and receives a document from Maria. He is a naturalist who wants to travel to Delhi to study bats. William complains that Damian gets the document. He suggests he could report Maria, but she instinctively trusts William won't. He explains that there are valid reasons Damian cannot legally get the document. But Maria believes that it is worth taking risks to make your dreams come true, and that no one has the right to step in when those she is helping are willing to take the risks.

William and Maria go to their apartment where they spend a night of passion. There, Maria William shows her "memory book" (an e-book that appears to convert the user's memories into videos), which contains memories of her parents and close friends. Other videos show how she shares documents with other people. Maria says she thinks these people are beautiful; her eyes are full of desire and dreams and she wants to help them. When Maria sleeps, William finds a forged document in her room, which he takes away. Williams visa expires the next day, so he returns to his family. On the way to the airport, he gives the forged document to a poor street vendor, an act of humanity that could change the vendor's life. A few days later, he heard that Damian died in Delhi - from a virus to which he had no immunity. His superior rebukes William for not having found the real forger in "Sphinx". William claims he couldn't handle the empathy virus and says someone else should leave. But he has to go back to Shanghai and finish the task.

Back in Shanghai, William discovers that Maria is gone. Her apartment is deserted and the only clue is an appointment she made at a clinic. He goes to the clinic and finds out that Maria was pregnant but that the pregnancy was terminated due to Code 46 violation. William now knows that Maria must be related to him, but has no idea how that is possible. The authorities have since responded to the Code 46 violation and erased Maria's memory of the man who made her pregnant. Because William didn't betray them, they didn't do anything else. William discovers that Mary has been taken to another institution for memory erasure and goes there to rescue her. He does this by claiming that she is a witness to his investigation. After she is released, William reminds her of their time together, which is also in the memory book, and her feelings of love for him return. When she sleeps, William takes a hair from Maria, from which he has a DNA analysis done (similar to Gattaca ). He finds out that Maria is 50% genetically identical to him - she is a clone of his mother who was a test tube baby . This knowledge does not affect Williams' feelings, but he does not reveal the information to Maria.

The two travel to Jebel Ali in the Middle East, for which they do not need a visa. They hide in the old town where they rent a room. William discovers that not only has Mary's memory been erased, but she has contracted a virus that causes a high level of adrenaline rush when there is physical contact with the person who was injured with Code 46. Still, Maria wants to sleep with William one more time, so she lets him tie her up to prevent her from beating or hurting him.

After that, Maria falls into a sleepwalking state (also caused by the virus), which forces her to report the renewed violation of Code 46 to the authorities. She does this subconsciously while William is aware of the virus. They rent an old car and drive away to escape the authorities. Eventually they have a car accident and both of them pass out. When William wakes up, he's back in Seattle with his wife and child. He has no memory of Maria or the break of Code 46 - all of his memories of her and their time together have been erased. Authorities had taken William to court but ruled that the empathy virus had affected his judgment. He tries to use the empathy virus to read his son's mind when driving back from the hospital, but to no avail. Maria has been punished more severely - she is sent into exile in the devastated land “outside”. However, she has kept her memories of William and her subway dream is becoming complete; the person she meets at the last stop is William.

Code 46

Article 1 says: People who are 100%, 50% or 25% related are not allowed to have children together. If a pregnancy does occur anyway, it must be terminated. If the relationship was unknown, medical intervention can be performed to prevent further Code 46 violations. If it was known, then there is a crime.

Trivia

  • In the scene in the karaoke club, a karaoke guest sings the well-known song Should I Stay or Should I Go? by Mick Jones of The Clash . This is a cameo of the well-known singer Mick Jones as the karaoke singer himself, which is rated as a humorous film contribution, as the song was also originally written by him. Since the scene had to be shot several times, he stumbles over his own original lyrics and accidentally sings "If I go there will be trouble. If I GO it will be double". According to the well-known original recording of the song, the lyrics should be "If I go there will be trouble. If I STAY it will be double". In the end, the wrong version remains as a so-called goof in the film.
  • 46 is (probably not by chance) the number of chromosomes (23 pairs) in human DNA .
  • In the film, however, the proportionality in the case of genetically close relationships was shown in a factually unrealistic way. Two unrelated people cannot have a 0% genetic relationship, and two completely independent genetically unrelated parents cannot create a 50% genetic relationship between themselves and their children. Even the DNA between humans and chimpanzees is actually about 98.7% identical. But this was an artistic decision in the film.

Reviews

Lexicon of international film : “The film dispenses with the effects customary in the genre, but rather uses the urban design of modern metropolises as the background to a science fiction story revolving around identity and personal freedom. He creates the horrific vision of a controlled and hermetic world, which, even in its extremes, is only a short span away from the present and conveys an atmosphere of existential fear. Formally of cool, unemotional consequence. "

Awards (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Code 46 . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2005 (PDF; test number: 101 478 V / DVD).
  2. ↑ Code 46 (2003) - Trivia - IMDb: Listed trivia facts about the film Code 46 (2003) in the Internet Movie Database. Retrieved September 12, 2014.
  3. ↑ Code 46 (2003) - Goofs (film errors) - IMDb: Listed film errors in the film Code 46 (2003) in the Internet Movie Database. Retrieved September 12, 2014.
  4. ^ Code 46. In: Lexicon of international film . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used