Code 46
Encyclopedia
Code 46 is a 2003 British
film
directed by Michael Winterbottom
, with screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce
. It was produced by BBC Films
and Revolution Films. It is a disquieting science fiction
love story with themes that explore the moral impacts of advances in biotechnology. The soundtrack was composed by David Holmes
under the name "Free Association". The film was shot in Dubai
, Shanghai
, Kuala Lumpur
and many interiors in London
, both for logistic reasons and because the juxtaposition of elements of these cities offered a believable futuristic setting.
language of the day (which comprises elements of English
, Spanish
, French
, Arabic
, Italian
, Farsi and Mandarin).
Most residents of the cities venture outside at night and remain indoors during the day, as direct sunlight has come to be thought of as hazardous to their health. However, many residents inside and outside the cities still work and venture outdoors during the daytime hours (as seen on multiple occasions throughout the film). The form of government
appears to be authoritarian
in nature and at least somewhat dystopian. Society is regulated by various "codes". The eponymous code of the movie title prohibits "genetically incestuous reproduction", which may occur as a result of the various medical technologies which have become commonplace, such as cloning
.
The main character is William Geld (Tim Robbins
), an insurance fraud
investigator based in Seattle who is sent to Shanghai
to interview employees at a company known as "The Sphinx", which manufactures "covers", ostensibly "insurance cover documents" but which are in fact documents regulating the permissible movements of persons between various domains such as cities and between "inside" and "outside". William's assignment is to identify employees who are suspected of forging and smuggling "covers" . After interviewing numerous Sphinx employees, he identifies a young worker named Maria Gonzalez (Samantha Morton
) as the forger and supplier of "covers". He is able to do this by means of a genetically engineered "empathy
virus
" which allows him to obtain unstated information from people if they voluntarily reveal something about themselves. Maria tells William that she has the same dream
each birthday: she is traveling the subway
to meet someone she cannot identify. Each birthday she is one station
closer to her destination, where she expects to meet the person she is looking for. William is captivated by her, and instead of turning her over to security, identifies another employee as the forger.
William then follows Maria and they meet and begin an affair. They have dinner, then go to a nightclub. Putting complete trust in a man who could have had her arrested, Maria reveals how she was able to smuggle papelles out of her workplace. In the club they meet Damian (David Fahm), a naturalist who longs to travel to Delhi
to study bat
s. He has applied for cover for eight consecutive years but has been refused each time. Maria supplies Damian with a papelle. William is upset by this and indicates that he should turn Maria over to the authorities, but Maria somehow knows that William would not do this. William explains that there are legitimate reasons why Damian is unable to obtain the proper clearances legally. However, Maria believes that some risks are worth taking to fulfill one's dreams and that no one has any right to interfere if those she helps are willing to take that risk.
William and Maria then leave for her apartment where they spend a passionate night together. While there Maria shows William her "memory scrapbook" (an electronic booklet that records and displays video from the user's mind), which contains memories of her parents and close friends. Other movies show her passing off papelles to various people. Maria says she thinks these people are beautiful and that their eyes are full of desire and dreams, and that they have a different look from "everyday" people, and she wants to help them. As Maria sleeps, William finds a forged cover in her room and takes it.
William's travel cover will expire the next day so he returns home to his family. On the way to the airport, he stops to give the forged cover document to a poor street vendor at the city's perimeter checkpoint, an act of humanity which could change the anonymous vendor's life. A few days later he learns that Damian died in Delhi after exposure to a virus to which he had no immunity, and it is known that Damian was able to travel there using a forged cover made while William was in Shanghai. William is reprimanded by his superior for not discovering the true Sphinx forger. He explains that he had trouble with his empathy virus and requests that someone else be sent, mentioning also that there may have been an accomplice to the innocent man he fingered as the guilty party. However, he is ordered to deal with the problem and to return to Shanghai to complete his assignment.
Upon his return William discovers that Maria has gone. Her apartment is abandoned and the only clue to her whereabouts is an appointment scheduled at a medical clinic. He visits the clinic and using his empathic abilities learns that Maria was pregnant, but that the pregnancy was terminated due to a violation of Code 46. William knows that this means Maria is somehow genetically related to him, but he has no idea how this is possible.
William discovers that Maria has been taken to another institution to have her memory of the episode erased. He goes there and talks to Maria, but finds her memory of him has been erased. He succeeds in getting the clinic to release Maria into his care by telling them she is a witness in his fraud investigation. After she is released William proves to Maria that she knows him by his intimate knowledge of her and by showing her the memory recording of when she gave Damian the papelle, which includes a shot of William. Williams tells her about the memory erasure, and about how he didn't report her for fraud. Maria is disturbed by this information and becomes very distressed. William gives her a sleeping pill and while she is sleeping, he cuts some hair from her head and takes it to a facility which provides instant DNA analysis. There he discovers that Maria is fifty percent genetically related to him, and that she is a biological clone
of his mother, who was one of a set of twenty four in-vitro fertilised
clones. This knowledge does not affect William's feelings, but instead of going back to Maria he decides to go home to his family. However when he tries to leave he is not allowed to do so as his 24-hour cover is now expired.
William then realizes that his only hope of returning home is to get a papelle from Maria. He returns to her apartment and tells her about his inability to leave and she agrees to help him. She tells him she must acquire a papelle and that she will meet him at the airport later. She goes to work and obtains a papelle, but is unable to forge one herself, as she was moved to another area of work, so a co-worker makes the cover for her. While taking a train to meet William she remembers her birthday dream, and that he was the person she is looking for in the dream, and she remembers her feelings for him. She meets William and gives him the papelle and then tells him she remembers him. He decides not to leave her.
William and Maria then travel to Jebel Ali
in the Middle East
, which does not require special travel clearance. The two hide out in the old city where they book a room. Here William reveals to Maria that as well as the memory wiping she has been given a virus that induces a terrorizing adrenaline rush in response to physical contact with the person who brought about the Code 46 violation. However, Maria still wants to make love with William and so he ties her down to prevent her from fleeing once the adrenaline rush kicks in.
Afterward, Maria enters a somnambulistic state also caused by the virus which forces her to report the further Code 46 violation to the authorities. She is unconscious of this, though William is aware of the virus's reaction. They then rent an old car and travel away to escape the authorities who are tracking them. William crashes the car while avoiding a collision with camels and pedestrians and they are both knocked unconscious.
When William awakes in the hospital he finds himself in Seattle with his wife and child. He has no memory of Maria or the Code 46 violation, as all memories of her and their time together have been completely flushed from his mind. The authorities had brought William before a tribunal, but decided the empathy virus had affected his judgment. He attempts to use the empathy virus to read his son's thoughts on the drive back from the hospital, but is unable to. Maria is more severely punished, in effect, by having her memories of William loving her not be erased, essentially forced to remember him and exiled to the place she hated the most, the desert, outside of "cover". Her final words of the film (portrayed through Voice Over of the end-of-film events and a montage of her poor, "beggar" life and existence) are, "I miss you."
s (23 pairs).
There are some connections with the Oedipus
myth. The most obvious are the inadvertent mother-son sexual relation and the Sphinx
, but also Maria's exile and William's loss of empathy (compare to Oedipus' loss of sight).
Characters in Code 46 frequently use words from a number of languages, especially Spanish
, combined with English to communicate with each other. For example, the characters use the Mandarin Chinese "Ni Hao" for greeting each other, the Spanish "palabra" for "password", the Basque
word "agur" for hello, and Khoda Hafez being Farsi for goodbye. There are also words in Italian (e. g. "ti amo", I love you), in French (e. g. "à bientôt", see you soon), and Arabic traditional greetings like "As-Salamu Alaykum
." The idea is to portray a society that is not only multi-ethnic but also with a language-fusion with expressions coming from the dominant languages of our present and those that are going to be dominant in our future.
In the karaoke
club scene, Mick Jones
of The Clash
sings The Clash song "Should I Stay or Should I Go?". Earlier in the same scene, a girl singing along with a piano is playing a famous theme of Portugal's traditional genre Fado de Coimbra, named "Coimbra Menina e Moça".
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
directed by Michael Winterbottom
Michael Winterbottom
Michael Winterbottom is a prolific English filmmaker who has directed seventeen feature films in the past fifteen years. He began his career working in British television before moving into features...
, with screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce
Frank Cottrell Boyce
-Awards:*2004: Buch des Monats des Instituts für Jugendliteratur/Book of the Month by the Institute for Youth Literature , Millions*2004: Carnegie Medal, Millions*2004: Luchs des Jahres , Millions...
. It was produced by BBC Films
BBC Films
BBC Films is the feature film-making arm of the BBC. It has produced or co-produced some of the most successful British films of recent years, including An Education, StreetDance 3D, Fish Tank, Stage Beauty, A Cock and Bull Story, Nativity! and Match Point.It aims to make strong British films with...
and Revolution Films. It is a disquieting science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
love story with themes that explore the moral impacts of advances in biotechnology. The soundtrack was composed by David Holmes
David Holmes (musician)
David Holmes is a Northern Irish DJ, musician and composer.-Career:Holmes began djing in Belfast from the age of 15. His first hit was the song "DeNiro", with Ashley Beedle, in 1992. In the early to mid 1990s he ran two club nights in the Belfast Art College known as Sugar Sweet and Shake Yer Brain...
under the name "Free Association". The film was shot in Dubai
Dubai
Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...
, Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
, Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur is the capital and the second largest city in Malaysia by population. The city proper, making up an area of , has a population of 1.4 million as of 2010. Greater Kuala Lumpur, also known as the Klang Valley, is an urban agglomeration of 7.2 million...
and many interiors in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, both for logistic reasons and because the juxtaposition of elements of these cities offered a believable futuristic setting.
Plot
It is the not-too-distant future. The population is divided between those who live "inside", in high-density cities physically separated from "outside", where a poor underclass live. Access to and travel between the cities is highly restricted, and regulated through the use of health cover documents, known as "papelles" in the global pidginPidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
language of the day (which comprises elements of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Farsi and Mandarin).
Most residents of the cities venture outside at night and remain indoors during the day, as direct sunlight has come to be thought of as hazardous to their health. However, many residents inside and outside the cities still work and venture outdoors during the daytime hours (as seen on multiple occasions throughout the film). The form of government
Form of government
A form of government, or form of state governance, refers to the set of political institutions by which a government of a state is organized. Synonyms include "regime type" and "system of government".-Empirical and conceptual problems:...
appears to be authoritarian
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
in nature and at least somewhat dystopian. Society is regulated by various "codes". The eponymous code of the movie title prohibits "genetically incestuous reproduction", which may occur as a result of the various medical technologies which have become commonplace, such as cloning
Cloning
Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...
.
The main character is William Geld (Tim Robbins
Tim Robbins
Timothy Francis "Tim" Robbins is an American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist and musician. He is the former longtime partner of actress Susan Sarandon...
), an insurance fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
investigator based in Seattle who is sent to Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
to interview employees at a company known as "The Sphinx", which manufactures "covers", ostensibly "insurance cover documents" but which are in fact documents regulating the permissible movements of persons between various domains such as cities and between "inside" and "outside". William's assignment is to identify employees who are suspected of forging and smuggling "covers" . After interviewing numerous Sphinx employees, he identifies a young worker named Maria Gonzalez (Samantha Morton
Samantha Morton
Samantha Jane Morton is an English actress and film director. She began her performing career with guest roles in television shows such as Soldier Soldier and Boon before making her film debut in the 1997 drama film This Is the Sea, playing the character of Hazel Stokes...
) as the forger and supplier of "covers". He is able to do this by means of a genetically engineered "empathy
Empathy
Empathy is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings that are being experienced by another sapient or semi-sapient being. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion. The English word was coined in 1909 by E.B...
virus
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...
" which allows him to obtain unstated information from people if they voluntarily reveal something about themselves. Maria tells William that she has the same dream
Recurring dream
A recurring dream is a dream which is experienced repeatedly over a long period.A person who experiences post-traumatic stress disorder may have recurring dreams about the traumatic event....
each birthday: she is traveling the subway
Rapid transit
A rapid transit, underground, subway, elevated railway, metro or metropolitan railway system is an electric passenger railway in an urban area with a high capacity and frequency, and grade separation from other traffic. Rapid transit systems are typically located either in underground tunnels or on...
to meet someone she cannot identify. Each birthday she is one station
Metro station
A metro station or subway station is a railway station for a rapid transit system, often known by names such as "metro", "underground" and "subway". It is often underground or elevated. At crossings of metro lines, they are multi-level....
closer to her destination, where she expects to meet the person she is looking for. William is captivated by her, and instead of turning her over to security, identifies another employee as the forger.
William then follows Maria and they meet and begin an affair. They have dinner, then go to a nightclub. Putting complete trust in a man who could have had her arrested, Maria reveals how she was able to smuggle papelles out of her workplace. In the club they meet Damian (David Fahm), a naturalist who longs to travel to Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
to study bat
Bat
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...
s. He has applied for cover for eight consecutive years but has been refused each time. Maria supplies Damian with a papelle. William is upset by this and indicates that he should turn Maria over to the authorities, but Maria somehow knows that William would not do this. William explains that there are legitimate reasons why Damian is unable to obtain the proper clearances legally. However, Maria believes that some risks are worth taking to fulfill one's dreams and that no one has any right to interfere if those she helps are willing to take that risk.
William and Maria then leave for her apartment where they spend a passionate night together. While there Maria shows William her "memory scrapbook" (an electronic booklet that records and displays video from the user's mind), which contains memories of her parents and close friends. Other movies show her passing off papelles to various people. Maria says she thinks these people are beautiful and that their eyes are full of desire and dreams, and that they have a different look from "everyday" people, and she wants to help them. As Maria sleeps, William finds a forged cover in her room and takes it.
William's travel cover will expire the next day so he returns home to his family. On the way to the airport, he stops to give the forged cover document to a poor street vendor at the city's perimeter checkpoint, an act of humanity which could change the anonymous vendor's life. A few days later he learns that Damian died in Delhi after exposure to a virus to which he had no immunity, and it is known that Damian was able to travel there using a forged cover made while William was in Shanghai. William is reprimanded by his superior for not discovering the true Sphinx forger. He explains that he had trouble with his empathy virus and requests that someone else be sent, mentioning also that there may have been an accomplice to the innocent man he fingered as the guilty party. However, he is ordered to deal with the problem and to return to Shanghai to complete his assignment.
Upon his return William discovers that Maria has gone. Her apartment is abandoned and the only clue to her whereabouts is an appointment scheduled at a medical clinic. He visits the clinic and using his empathic abilities learns that Maria was pregnant, but that the pregnancy was terminated due to a violation of Code 46. William knows that this means Maria is somehow genetically related to him, but he has no idea how this is possible.
William discovers that Maria has been taken to another institution to have her memory of the episode erased. He goes there and talks to Maria, but finds her memory of him has been erased. He succeeds in getting the clinic to release Maria into his care by telling them she is a witness in his fraud investigation. After she is released William proves to Maria that she knows him by his intimate knowledge of her and by showing her the memory recording of when she gave Damian the papelle, which includes a shot of William. Williams tells her about the memory erasure, and about how he didn't report her for fraud. Maria is disturbed by this information and becomes very distressed. William gives her a sleeping pill and while she is sleeping, he cuts some hair from her head and takes it to a facility which provides instant DNA analysis. There he discovers that Maria is fifty percent genetically related to him, and that she is a biological clone
Cloning
Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...
of his mother, who was one of a set of twenty four in-vitro fertilised
In vitro fertilisation
In vitro fertilisation is a process by which egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside the body: in vitro. IVF is a major treatment in infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed...
clones. This knowledge does not affect William's feelings, but instead of going back to Maria he decides to go home to his family. However when he tries to leave he is not allowed to do so as his 24-hour cover is now expired.
William then realizes that his only hope of returning home is to get a papelle from Maria. He returns to her apartment and tells her about his inability to leave and she agrees to help him. She tells him she must acquire a papelle and that she will meet him at the airport later. She goes to work and obtains a papelle, but is unable to forge one herself, as she was moved to another area of work, so a co-worker makes the cover for her. While taking a train to meet William she remembers her birthday dream, and that he was the person she is looking for in the dream, and she remembers her feelings for him. She meets William and gives him the papelle and then tells him she remembers him. He decides not to leave her.
William and Maria then travel to Jebel Ali
Jebel Ali Free Zone
Jebel Ali Free Zone is a free economic zone located in the Jebel Ali area at the far western end of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, near Abu Dhabi...
in the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, which does not require special travel clearance. The two hide out in the old city where they book a room. Here William reveals to Maria that as well as the memory wiping she has been given a virus that induces a terrorizing adrenaline rush in response to physical contact with the person who brought about the Code 46 violation. However, Maria still wants to make love with William and so he ties her down to prevent her from fleeing once the adrenaline rush kicks in.
Afterward, Maria enters a somnambulistic state also caused by the virus which forces her to report the further Code 46 violation to the authorities. She is unconscious of this, though William is aware of the virus's reaction. They then rent an old car and travel away to escape the authorities who are tracking them. William crashes the car while avoiding a collision with camels and pedestrians and they are both knocked unconscious.
When William awakes in the hospital he finds himself in Seattle with his wife and child. He has no memory of Maria or the Code 46 violation, as all memories of her and their time together have been completely flushed from his mind. The authorities had brought William before a tribunal, but decided the empathy virus had affected his judgment. He attempts to use the empathy virus to read his son's thoughts on the drive back from the hospital, but is unable to. Maria is more severely punished, in effect, by having her memories of William loving her not be erased, essentially forced to remember him and exiled to the place she hated the most, the desert, outside of "cover". Her final words of the film (portrayed through Voice Over of the end-of-film events and a montage of her poor, "beggar" life and existence) are, "I miss you."
Cast
- Tim RobbinsTim RobbinsTimothy Francis "Tim" Robbins is an American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist and musician. He is the former longtime partner of actress Susan Sarandon...
as William Geld - Samantha MortonSamantha MortonSamantha Jane Morton is an English actress and film director. She began her performing career with guest roles in television shows such as Soldier Soldier and Boon before making her film debut in the 1997 drama film This Is the Sea, playing the character of Hazel Stokes...
as Maria Gonzalez - Togo IgawaTogo Igawa, born in Tokyo on 26 September 1946, is a Japanese actor who works primarily in British films and television.In recent years he has had roles in major motion pictures such as Revolver, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Last Samurai, and Sunshine...
as driver - Natalie MendozaNatalie MendozaNatalie Jackson Mendoza is a Hong Kong-born Australian-British-Filipina classical theatre-trained actress and musician. She is best known for her role as one of the main characters, Jackie Clunes in the British TV drama Hotel Babylon and as tough girl Juno in the acclaimed horror thriller The...
Sphinx Receptionist - Nabil ElouahabiNabil ElouahabiNabil Elouahabi , sometimes credited as Nabil Elouhabi, is a British Moroccan actor, arguably best known for his role as Tariq Larousi in EastEnders from 2003 to 2005, or as his role as "Gary", the 'kidnapped' son of a French millionaire, in Only Fools and Horses in 2002.-Career:Nabil made his...
as vendor - Om PuriOm PuriOm Puri is an Indian actor who has appeared in both mainstream Indian films and art films. His credits also include appearances in British and American films. He has received an honorary OBE.-Early life:...
as Bahkland - Jeanne BalibarJeanne BalibarJeanne Balibar is a French actress and singer.She was born in Paris. She began her acting career on the stage, in "Don Juan" at the Festival d'Avignon. Her first film role was in Arnaud Desplechin's 1992 film The Sentinel. She continues to perform in both spheres.Recently she starred in Ne Change...
as Sylvie - Nina WadiaNina Wadia-Television and film:Wadia first came to prominence in BBC sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, playing characters such as Mrs "I can make it at home for nothing!" and one half of The Competitive Mothers...
as clinic receptionist - Archana "Archie" Panjabi as airline ticket agent
Development
Human DNA has 46 chromosomeChromosome
A chromosome is an organized structure of DNA and protein found in cells. It is a single piece of coiled DNA containing many genes, regulatory elements and other nucleotide sequences. Chromosomes also contain DNA-bound proteins, which serve to package the DNA and control its functions.Chromosomes...
s (23 pairs).
There are some connections with the Oedipus
Oedipus
Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...
myth. The most obvious are the inadvertent mother-son sexual relation and the Sphinx
Sphinx
A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...
, but also Maria's exile and William's loss of empathy (compare to Oedipus' loss of sight).
Characters in Code 46 frequently use words from a number of languages, especially Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, combined with English to communicate with each other. For example, the characters use the Mandarin Chinese "Ni Hao" for greeting each other, the Spanish "palabra" for "password", the Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
word "agur" for hello, and Khoda Hafez being Farsi for goodbye. There are also words in Italian (e. g. "ti amo", I love you), in French (e. g. "à bientôt", see you soon), and Arabic traditional greetings like "As-Salamu Alaykum
As-Salamu Alaykum
As-Salāmu `Alaykum is a traditional Muslim greeting, often translated as Peace be upon you.-Usage:*In Arabia, the greeting is associated with shaking right hands and then possibly two or three light cheek to cheek kisses....
." The idea is to portray a society that is not only multi-ethnic but also with a language-fusion with expressions coming from the dominant languages of our present and those that are going to be dominant in our future.
In the karaoke
Karaoke
is a form of interactive entertainment or video game in which amateur singers sing along with recorded music using a microphone and public address system. The music is typically a well-known pop song minus the lead vocal. Lyrics are usually displayed on a video screen, along with a moving symbol,...
club scene, Mick Jones
Mick Jones (The Clash)
Michael Geoffrey "Mick" Jones is the former lead guitarist, secondary vocalist and co-founder for the British punk rock band The Clash until his dismissal in 1983. He went on to form the band Big Audio Dynamite with Don Letts before line-up changes led to the formation of Big Audio Dynamite II and...
of The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
sings The Clash song "Should I Stay or Should I Go?". Earlier in the same scene, a girl singing along with a piano is playing a famous theme of Portugal's traditional genre Fado de Coimbra, named "Coimbra Menina e Moça".
External links
- Official site
- Radio interview about Code 46 with Michael WinterbottomMichael WinterbottomMichael Winterbottom is a prolific English filmmaker who has directed seventeen feature films in the past fifteen years. He began his career working in British television before moving into features...
, first broadcast on Resonance FMResonance FMResonance 104.4 FM is a London based non-profit community radio station run by the London Musicians' Collective .The station is staffed by four permanent staff members, including programme controller Ed Baxter and over 300 volunteer technical and production staff.Until September 2007, ResonanceFM... - The future is now: Sci-fic in real locations