Code 46 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Code 46 Blu-ray Movie Review

Elysian Sunshine of the 1984 Gattaca.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 24, 2016

My Shaun the Sheep Movie Blu-ray review mentioned how I am sometimes contacted by various members of Blu-ray.com about the absence of subtitles on various releases. I rarely have any salient information to offer, other than that pre-existing masters without subtitles might have been licensed and that whatever issuing label is releasing the product hasn’t wanted to (or perhaps was contractually prevented from) springing for subtitles themselves. One of the more frequent labels to feel the wrath of consumers has been Olive Films, and even those who, like I do, rarely feel the “need” for subtitles for an English language offering might be wishing that someone had sprung for subtitles somewhere along the way with regard to Code 46. This often quite interesting science fiction film from 2003 posits a kind of Gattaca-esque future where biotechnology and genetics rule the day. There’s also a bit of Elysium at play as well, with a rather pronounced disconnect between the haves and the have nots. And just for good measure, it's best to throw in a dash of 1984 into the mix, for Code 46 features a pair of star-crossed lovers whose affair breaks all sorts of fascistic dystopian future government rules. But, wait! You also get: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, with those selfsame star-crossed lovers having to endure the slings and arrows of memory erasure and/or fabrication. What makes watching the film so challenging at times is something I initially chalked up to a variety of sometimes thick accents by various actors, but which upon a bit of research I’ve found out is actually one of the conceits of the film: many of the characters speak in a kind of international patois that contains snippets of phonemes or words from a whole host of historically disparate languages, including everything from Mandarin to Spanish to Arabic to, yes, “even” English. Without subtitles to help ferret through this onslaught of often alien sounding dialogue, trying to figure out what people are talking about becomes a serious issue at times.

A series of text overlays attempts to give some context as Code 46 starts, in fact supposedly quoting from that very section of a future legal document, a section which outlines punishments for those caught disobeying strictures against those who are genetically similar or identical (due to rampant cloning) from having children together. That certainly sets up an interesting subtext of angst as the film gets underway, which is one reason why the fact the film seems to go off on a lengthy detour may strike some as a bit strange from a narrative standpoint.

Code 46 is narrated throughout by Maria Gonzales (Samantha Morton), a woman who is haunted by a recurring dream which tends to occur on the eve of her birthday, a dream which sees her moving through a series of subway cars in order to get to someone she knows she’s supposed to meet (in a scene which seems to be almost weirdly precognitive—to reference Minority Report, another Morton film—of a certain sequence in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). Maria talks about meeting “you”, which turns out to be fraud investigator William Geld (Tim Robbins), who arrives at Maria’s place of work, a sleek, modern assembly line of some sort in a huge business known The Sphinx.

The film frankly never does an overly facile job of explaining exactly what’s going on, a tendency that is exacerbated by the weird multilingual dialogue that is peppered throughout any given scene. Reading up on the film online after having watched it, some plot points have become at least somewhat clearer. The Sphinx is in the business of manufacturing what amount to passports, for citizens’ movements are tightly controlled in this future society. It turns out Maria has been getting forged passports out of The Sphinx and has been selling them on the black market, allowing unfortunates who have been stuck in one location for their entire lives to go places they’ve only dreamed of. William has availed himself of a future technology called an “empathy virus”, a kind of drug which allows him to intuit whether people are telling him the truth or not simply by having them relay some ostensibly picayune detail about themselves to William. While his investigation points to Maria, William is uncharacteristically hypnotized by the woman and instead fingers an innocent man as the culprit.

A halting romance ensues, one which finally gets around to the titular Code 46, something that in turn reveals elements of cloning, though in a real sense, that actual aspect of this probably overly convoluted plot really turns out not to be all that important to the overall arc of the story. (The fact that it turns out William has "mommy issues" of a whole new kind may strike some as a little squirm inducing.) What tends to resonate here is two souls caught up in the machinery of a future quasi-fascistic society who simply want to love each other in freedom. It’s a bit more nuanced than other similar storylines in that it turns out William is actually more or less happily married and has a wonderful little boy with his wife.

Things get fairly complex once Maria violates Code 46 and has her memory wiped, but that’s actually just about mid-stream in this winding tale of ultimately doomed romance. The film has a really interesting tone, almost Kubrickian at times, with a kind of languid pace, and a sterile ambience that seems to suggest the future will be high tech but decidedly unemotional. Performances are interesting if a bit mannered, especially Morton, who due to various vagaries of Maria’s fate, is forced to stumble through various sequences as if slightly drugged.

Code 46 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Code 46 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The IMDb lists this as having been shot solely on (Super) 35mm, but in contrasting grain and sharpness in certain sequences, I have to wonder if individual segments may have been filmed on Super 16 (see screenshots 4 and 9, for example, and then compare them to many of the other screenshots accompanying this review). If not actual stock differences, it's obvious that director Michael Winterbottom and cinematographer Alwin Kuchler must have tweaked the imagery at some point (again according to the IMDb, this went through a Digital Intermediate phase), for there's quite a striking difference between various sequences in the film in terms of overall clarity, levels of detail and grain structure. I initially thought this might be due to some underlying story element (i.e., maybe the grainier, softer moments were supposed to be "dream sequences"), but that doesn't really seem to hold water after having seen the film twice now. In any case, the bulk of this transfer is very appealing looking, albeit featuring an intentionally bland palette quite a bit of the time. Detail levels are quite good in a number of close-ups, and the film's use of a number of foreign locations quite capably creates the illusion of a high tech and yet weirdly barren future world. There are very slight compression issues at times with regard to the fluctuating grain amounts, but they're negligible.

Code 46 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Code 46's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 does a nice job of creating a somewhat sterile sonic environment, one that's occasionally punctuated by urban noises. The film's dialogue is well rendered and well prioritized. Things also benefit from a rather well done score which mixes synth heavy ambient and even trance like cues, as well as a few source cues.

Code 46 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:01)

Code 46 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Code 46 is frankly a film I had never even heard of until the screener showed up on my doorstep. I think a couple of things probably hurt this film at the time of its release. First, its handling of various plot elements is simply too discursive, and therefore some audience members (like yours truly) may feel confused at times. That tendency is only multiplied by the odd "language" the characters speak, not to mention the glut of sometimes quite thick accents at play. All of this said, this is really one of the more intriguing science fiction tinged films I've seen recently, and it certainly deserves wider notice. Technical merits are generally strong, and Code 46 comes Recommended.