Viking Night: Se7en
By Bruce Hall
April 20, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Among the films that I’ve covered here, Se7en bears the distinction of actually having been a critical and financial success – not to mention very controversial. Most of the people you know have probably seen it, and most of the people who have seen it tend to have starkly formed opinions about it. But what truly makes a film enduring is often when there exists a critical mass of people who are willing to watch it repeatedly over the years.
Se7en has a reputation for being a difficult film to watch, and it comes by this standing honestly. Dark, gritty, atmospheric and often bloody, Se7en is not for the faint of heart. But there’s hidden buoyancy to the movie that prevents it from being quite as depressing as it wants to be; when you break it down to its fundamentals, Se7en is almost laughably derivative. There is a diabolically theatrical serial killer who always seems one step ahead of his pursuers. There’s the jaded, impossibly resourceful police detective on the cusp of retirement, coupled with a hotheaded partner prone to fisticuffs and foul language. There are not so subtle leaps of logic, plot contrivances large enough to earn their own ZIP code and if you’re Fox Mulder, just a hint of mid-90s anti-government paranoia thrown in for good measure. But what holds it all together and keeps your mind largely away from these things is a rare and happy convergence of talent.
Director David Fincher has a flair for mining dreary, pedestrian source material for unexpected depth. His cast members all turn in pitch perfect performances, adding dimension to what would otherwise be bland caricatures. And writer Andrew Walker finds himself fortunate to see his work in such good hands. What could easily have been just another hackneyed rip-off of Silence of the Lambs has instead become an iconic genre film in its own right, spawning its own cottage industry of imitators.
Se7en takes place in an environment that could easily have been Blade Runner’s dystopian Los Angeles, 25 years earlier. Rendered in bleak earth tones and long shadows, the unnamed city is beset by gloom and is under an almost constant deluge of rain, as though the city itself were weeping over its own sad state of affairs. As it turns out, this filthy metropolis is one of the film’s most important characters; its brooding vistas and faceless, shuffling inhabitants serve as an ominous backdrop to our lead characters and the hellish nightmare that eventually consumes them.
In this world, Detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) has spent his entire career, and finds himself just one week away from retirement. Somerset is taken straight from the cinematic book of stock character templates; he’s a cerebral and unusually cunning detective who is lionized by his peers for his success, even as they ostracize him for his unconventional tenacity. It’s a pretty common storytelling technique to make one character appear brilliant by rendering everyone around him stunningly incompetent, and Somerset is no exception. Although he possesses a pretentiously encyclopedic knowledge of classical literature, his observations are generally no more insightful than those of Michael Knight and his talking car. But his peers seem almost intentionally incurious, leaving Somerset wallowing in a black hole of cynicism over our troubled society and the apathy of those charged to protect it.
Somerset is then (in another police story standby) that he’s paired with a newcomer, Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt). Naturally, Mills is an impulsive youth – nearly as clever as Somerset but less refined, and more apt to follow his emotions rather than his mind. An incurable optimist, Mills deliberately chose reassignment to this Precinct of the Damned out of an activist’s desire to change things for the better. Mills behaves as an obvious counterweight to Somerset’s intellectual sulking, but the gravity both actors bring to their roles quite nicely fills out what would otherwise be just another highly conventional pair of star crossed police detectives.
The partners are assigned to investigate a ghoulish murder, where an obese man was forced to gorge himself to death, and the killer has left behind references to the Biblical sin of Gluttony. In a move that the movie treats as a stroke of genius, Somerset makes the somewhat obvious observation that the killer is referencing Scripture and that there will be more attacks, as there are in fact Seven Deadly Sins. While it is true that police are often reluctant to acknowledge the possibility of a serial killer, when a suspect leaves you a note detailing his MO as well as his intent to kill again, it seems to me you’ve got to call it for what it is. But movie plots are often simplifications of reality for the purpose of storytelling efficacy, and isolating Somerset and Mills in a dramatic fishbowl with the murderer effectively ramps up the tension of the story.
There are indeed more killings – Gluttony is quickly followed by Greed and Sloth, each murder more gruesome and symbolic than the last. The killer leaves behind more obvious and provocative clues, mocking his pursuers with relish. Frustrated by their suspect’s elusiveness, Mills and Somerset pit their dueling philosophies against one another and threaten to become adversaries. But at several pivotal points, Mills’ wife becomes a unifying catalyst, and all three discover that there really isn’t much space between them at all.
Like the other two leads, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) first appears to be yet another derivative, cardboard cutout. She initially seems less an independent person than a sub-character of her husband, a family member there only to be put in obvious danger at the story’s climax a-la Lethal Weapon. But despite being the only female character in a cast of dedicated Alpha Males, Tracy also serves as the film’s unexpected moral and emotional center. What initially seems to be someone sopping over with doe-eyed innocence proves to be the most beautiful thing in the film, and its only truly empathic individual.
Somerset grieves over the suffering and despair that has overcome his city but years of hiding behind philosophical truisms and sentient self pity have rendered him an emotional husk. And for all his self-righteous activism, David has become equally jaded by a different kind of anger – no amount of work by any one man can rid the world of evil, and it weighs on him. Yet Tracy feels the despair around them, and quite deeply. Somerset wants to give up and retire, David wants to fight the good fight but Tracy wants to leave – she frets over the possibility of raising a family in such a toxic environment and wishes to save what she has before it is taken from her. She forges a connection with Somerset that proves surprisingly poignant (if also a bit heavy handed), and it provides the film with another layer of unanticipated urgency.
The most fascinating part of it all is the way the unseen killer manages to remain very much a part of the story - not just because of his escalating carnage, but because you feel him there. He hovers just off screen, hanging over the lives of Mills and Somerset like an oppressive mist. They come close to catching him, using one of the most utterly contrived methods I think I‘ve ever seen in a detective movie. Yet as he moves from Lust to Pride and inches ever closer to the end of his bloody list, the killer turns the tables on his adversaries, inserting himself into their lives and making them part of the game.
Of course, as a staple of most serial killer films, the "hunter becoming hunted" motif is certainly nothing new. But even this potential shortcoming is offset by the inventive way in which the killer reels in the detectives, raising the stakes to a level that goes unnoticed until it is tragically too late. Se7en is an excellent example of how a highly conventional story told with highly conventional characters can be rendered unconventional by the inventiveness of its execution.
The film’s intimidating backdrop, measured direction and solid performances allow Se7en to transcend a mundane narrative and draw the audience’s attention to the main characters, instead of to the details of their surroundings. The net effect is that Fincher carefully steers the story around unexpected corners and down improbable alleys without the viewer becoming openly aware of it. He drops the answers to our questions like bread crumbs along the killer’s trail, if only we’d look down and see them. When the true identity of the suspect – who calls himself only John Doe - is finally revealed, it is in a highly unusual way, and we come to realize that he has been an even bigger part of the tale than we or the detectives have realized. Once John Doe’s deadly denouement is put into motion, all that remains is for Mills and Somerset to put the convictions they’ve so confidently held throughout the film to a final, grisly test.
You’ll notice that I have failed to mention the name of the actor who plays John Doe – this is because if you haven’t seen Se7en, for me to do so would ruin the effect of his revelation. This is one of those films where the identity of the killer is just as much a surprise as how he executes his endgame. And if you have seen Se7en, you’ll never forget the ending – and it will never fail to send icy chills up your spine every time you see it, or even think about it. It’s right up there with The Sixth Sense or Jacob’s Ladder – but instead of that chill giving way to an uplifting sense of warmth and resolution, it sinks in and stays there. Somerset has no idea how right he is when halfway through the film he mutters – almost offhand – “This isn’t going to have a happy ending.”