#also unrelated but i also have started watching kevin can fuck himself at your recommendation and i love the way it was filmed

[amatres]

VAMPIRE ERA LETS GO. have you seen. Midnight Mass on Netflix....

i have seen enough of it to be obsessed with the themes they approach with it!! the ending scene where they all sing on the bank as the sun rises has lived in my brain rent free since ive seen it

[therealkn]

David’s Resolution - Day 8

Day 8 (January 8, 2019)

Seven (1995)

“If we catch John Doe and he turns out to be the devil, I mean if he’s Satan himself, that might live up to our expectations, but he’s not the devil. He’s just a man.”

[Yeah, I know, I could have watched this on Day 7. Didn’t realize it until it was too late. Whatever, not really that big a deal.]

David Fincher did not have the most auspicious start to his career as a filmmaker. His feature debut was 1992′s Alien 3, a movie that 20th Century Fox meddled in everywhere they could and as much as he could, and he ultimately disowned the film after they locked him out of the editing room. Alien 3 was like someone deliberately breaking a vase and then asking you to try and piece it all together, but then decide to do it themselves just because they can. The whole ordeal with the film made Fincher feel like he may not want to do another movie. But, thankfully, he was given a really good script, and he made this movie. And then he made The Game, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network, and so on.

Seven (or Se7en if you want to be cool, but I am not cool) was the movie that showed people just what David Fincher could do if you let him do a movie without the studio fucking you over however they can. What you get is a taut police procedural that, no matter how many times you see it, even if you watch this movie for the first time knowing what happens, it still remains as suspenseful as if you were watching this movie blind.

The movie follows two detectives: the older, about-to-retire veteran William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and the younger, hot-tempered and emotional David Mills (Brad Pitt). Mills has just been assigned to Somerset on what is to be the older detective’s last case, which is investigating the death of an extremely obese man who was apparently force-fed until his stomach burst. Then there’s another murder that first seems unrelated: a lawyer whose office has “GREED” written in blood on the wall. After Somerset does a bit more investigating in the obese man’s death, he finds the word “GLUTTONY” written behind a refrigerator, and he realizes that they’re dealing with a serial killer who’s basing his M.O. on the seven deadly sins. And there’s five more to go.

In previous reviews, like the Death Walks films, I said that it would be hard to talk about the story because I didn’t want to spoil it. Well, fuck that. By now, Seven has fallen into the “it was his sled” category of twists that aren’t twists anymore because of how well-known the twist is. Basically everyone knows that Kevin Spacey’s the killer, and it’s Brad Pitt’s wife’s head in the box, and if you didn’t know it by now, then you would’ve likely found out soon anyway. If you don’t believe me that it’s not a twist anymore, consider this: what’s the most famous scene in the movie? The one thing everyone remembers? It’s Brad Pitt going, “Ohh, what’s in the booox?”

This film is dark. From beginning to end, you know it’s going to be dark and brutal and will not end well. Somerset even lampshades this by saying, “This isn’t going to have a happy ending.” Some people might be turned off from the film because of its darkness, and I can understand that. The film has a bleak, brutal, somewhat depressing tone to it, and ultimately the protagonists are unable to stop the killer’s murders, which can make people wonder what the fucking point of the movie is. If you don’t like this movie because you feel it’s too dark, that’s perfectly fine. 

But beyond that, what we have is a well-made thriller. The pacing of the film’s really fucking good, stringing us along at just the right speed so that things don’t feel like they’re being rushed or that the film is dragging its feet. The tone of the movie, while dark and brutal, is not excessively so, and even the more gruesome murders like Greed or Lust are ones we don’t really see much detail of. If this movie had been made a decade later, you can be damn sure we’d had long, detailed shots that don’t spare any of the gruesome details of the death. We’d have seen the mutilated body of the Lust victim, we’d have seen the killer mutilate the Pride victim, we’d definitely have seen the head of Mills’ wife. But by sparing us that, it leaves us to imagine the details in our mind, where they’re sure to be more fucked-up than what they actually would be on-screen. The film has a very disturbing atmosphere, but it doesn’t need to be gory or blood-soaked to be disturbing. It does so with the nature of the murders, the dreary environment, and the sense of discomfort as you enter the scenes of the crimes.

Adding to the atmosphere is the amazing score by Howard Shore, which is tense and nerve-racking and adds perfectly to the sense of unease that you feel watching this movie. Seriously, I’m on my fourth viewing (fun fact: David loves his audio commentary tracks and will listen to every one of them for his movies - in fact, I’m actually listening to one of this movie’s commentaries now) and it’s amazing how Shore’s music meshes with the film. It doesn’t feel like it’s overpowering or beating you over the head with what it’s trying to do.

And then you have the actors. Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt make for a great team, and at first it seems like your standard “older world-weary veteran teamed with young hot-tempered rookie” thing that we’ve seen countless times. Their professional and personal relationship, however, doesn’t get built over time as it’s forged through fire, but as they understand each other more and more with each new murder that comes up. Gwyneth Paltrow, playing Brad Pitt’s wife, doesn’t get that much to do but does a great job with what she has. R. Lee Ermey plays the police chief, who is surprisingly calm and restrained instead of being... well, R. Lee Ermey. You’re having the guy who is most famous as the drill instructor on Full Metal Jacket playing a character type who’s often yelling, and that doesn’t really happen. It’s weird, but well-written. Also, gotta give props to Leland Orser as the man who was forced to kill the Lust victim and who is believably shocked and freaked out of his mind. That’s because he actually was freaking out: in a bit of method acting that would make Robert de Niro or Christian Bale proud, he stayed up for two nights straight before shooting the scene and, between takes, he would sit in a corner and hyperventilate to make himself as believably scared out of his mind as possible. All that effort for a small but fairly important role. I applaud you, Mr. Orser. Is there another serial killer movie from the 1990s that he’s in? I’d like to know. (Yes, I already know that one, and trust me, I will watch it this year.)

And then we come to the killer, John Doe, played by Kevin Spacey. It’s difficult to talk about Spacey without bringing up the sexual assault scandal surrounding him, so all I will say is that he is very good in this movie, and I appreciate that the promotional material for the film did everything it could to make who the killer was a secret. That’s all I’m saying on the subject.

...Actually, now that I’ve said “serial killer movie”, you know what’s really interesting? This movie isn’t really about the serial killer. It’s basically a police procedural that just happens to have a serial killer with an M.O., and that’s nothing new. Of course, the idea of “serial killer whose M.O. is thematic punishment for their victims” would later form one of the core aspects of Saw, which can provoke the “Seinfeld is unfunny” effect on modern audiences watching this movie for the first time. But that’s not this movie. This isn’t about a psychopath who goes around murdering people as “punishment” for their sins. This is about two detectives who are trying to stop that serial killer. The movie doesn’t cut away to John Doe killing victims or preparing for their crimes or even show their personal life. It keeps its focus on the detectives and their efforts to solve the crime.

When you think about it, a major theme of the movie is apathy. It’s everywhere: in people who don’t care about what weird shit they have in their suitcase when they hire a prostitute, in a detective whose years of service have made him use apathy as a shield to live from day to day, even in the film’s muted and dreary color palette. The two characters who are most against apathy are Mills and John Doe; the former calls out Somerset for his apathy and saying that he doesn’t really believe what he says, while the latter is incapable of being apathetic to the world and that is a driving force behind his murders. Hell, the apathy is high when John Doe walks into the police station to surrender, covered in the blood of his victims, something that would be noticed the moment he walked in if this were real life. It really makes you wonder.

If you’re fine with films that go into darker territory, then yeah, I do recommend this. It’s a first-rate thriller and the true start of David Fincher’s career.

Next time: A mind screw of a movie that Roger Ebert would approve of.