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Revision as of 13:54, 11 January 2005 by Arcadian (talk | contribs) (broke down by sin)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The movie Seven or Se7en (Promotional spelling) (1995) is about a serial killer obsessed with the seven deadly sins. It was directed by David Fincher (his second movie) and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It utilizes a visual film technique known as bleach bypass.
Seven stars Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as the two detectives in charge of solving the crimes, Gwyneth Paltrow as the wife of Pitt's character, and Kevin Spacey as the killer.
Plot
Greed and Gluttony
In a rainy metropolis that is either New York or Philadelphia Detective Lt. William Somerset (Freeman) (possibly named for W. Somerset Maugham) is preparing to retire from police work after many gruelling and unpleasant years of dealing with the destitution and apathy bred within the grimy and forlorn city that is constantly depicted as sordid and dark. In his last week, he is partnered with Detective David Mills (Pitt), a much younger and more naive officer who just relocated to the department from somewhere outside the metropolis.
They meet one another at a crime scene in which an obese man who was force-fed, bound and tortured, lies dead. He has wires on ankles and wrists, and there is a bucket of vomit under the table. The pathologist later verifies that the man was fed repeatedly, then kicked in the side so he burst. This caused his stomach to split and led to an internal hemorrhage that brought on his demise. The first bit of evidence that has the two detectives believe they are after a killer with a grudge is Somerset's discovery of three shopping receipts, indicating that the killer had left the cockroach-infested, filthy apartment to visit a supermarket in between force-feeding the victim, who had eaten all the food in the house.
After their superior (R. Lee Ermey) confronts the detectives in his office, Somerset aruges that Mills should be placed on a different assignment. However, soon after, the gruesome murder of the prominent Jewish lawyer Eli Gould, who was made to excise a pound of his own flesh in the tradition of William Shakespeare's Jewish character Shylock, is discovered, and written on the floor in Gould's blood is the word GREED. Somerset goes back and does some re-investigating, and finds GLUTTONY written in grease behind the refrigerator of the apartment in which the obese man was murdered. He begins to suspect that the crimes are related, and confronts his superior to warn that there will be five more murders, each patterned after the remaining five of the seven deadly sins.
Somerset and Mills team up once again, and all previous tension seems to be obliterated after Mills' wife Tracy invites the demoralised and pessimistic detective to their new house for dinner. That same evening, they find a set of fingerprints at the site of Gould's murder. The evidence, cleverly hidden behind a painting which Mrs. Gould notices has been turned upside down, belong to a known child molestor and drug dealer, but as the task force prepare to storm the offender's residence the following morning, Somerset is already sure that he is not the person they are looking for.
Sloth
Proved right when the man is found tied to his bed, alive but suffering from severe muscular deterioration after having spent a year completely immobile, Somerset once again voices concern that they stand little chance of catching the cold-blooded, calculating killer, who photographed the process of the tied man's deterioration and manipulated the evidence the detectives collected to ensure that they discovered his victim exactly one year after he rendered him immobile. Besides the fact that the victim's brain is completely 'mush', the perpetrator severed his hand, which explains how his prints turned up at the scene of Eli Gould's murder. The word SLOTH is written on the wall.
Reinforcing the noir sense of decadence director Fincher has planted all through this brilliant classic is Tracy's private revelation to Somerset that she is pregnant but is not sure bringing a child into this world would be wise. Somerset tells her he was faced with the same decision at one point in life and chose the path of abortion. He has regretted it ever since, and advises her to never let Mills know she was pregnant if she chooses not to have it.
With the investigation going nowhere, Somerset pays a contact in the FBI to print out the list of names on the government database of "flagged" library books. Through the list (which is not fictitious and does exist in reality), they come up with a list of possible matches, one of which is an individual named Jonathan Doe (a play on the John Doe name used for anonymous crime victims). When they visit Doe's apartment, he opens fire at them from further down the hall and leads them on a chase through the apartment complex. During the pursuit, Mills is injured by Doe who escapes capture (This injury was added to the story after Brad Pitt injured himself attempting a stunt in the scene).
Lust
The inside of the man's apartment contains a darkroom and meticulously kept logs of the killer's random thoughts. Amongst the heap that suggests Jonathan Doe is an obsessive maniac, evidence of possible future victims arises. One of them seems to be a prostitute. There is also a receipt from a custom leather-goods fetish shop for an item that winds up being used in the murder of said prostitute; LUST is written on the door outside a murder scene where a frantic man with a serrated weapon covering his penis was forced to copulate with a bound working girl. Mills and Somerset later argue in a bar about the value of what they are doing, and Somerset is not convinced that staying on as a policeman would make any difference. Mills is.
Pride
A fifth victim turns up the next day after a phone call from John Doe to his own apartment. A model is found dead in her own bedroom. Doe cut off her nose to spite her face then offered her a choice of living with her disfigurement or suicide, by gluing a box of pills to one hand (from which she could overdose) and a phone to call for help to the other. By choosing suicide, she accedes to the sin of (PRIDE, which is written in blood on the headboard of the bed. When Mills and Somerset return to police headquarters, John Doe (Kevin Spacey) confronts them. His shirt is covered in blood.
Doe offers to plead guilty but only if allowed to escort the detectives to his final revelation. On the way there, he extensively alludes to the greatness of his achievement, and seems particularly preoccupied with Detective Mills. He offers reasons as to why he has committed the heinous murders, and, in one of the film's most startling moments, explains that in order to arouse a heightened consciousness in the desentisised, amoral people of today, one cannot expect to tap them on the shoulder and have them listen, but rather, hit them with a sledge hammer.
Envy and Wrath
When they arrive at Doe's prearranged location, dry and desert-like, a delivery truck pulls up. Inside is a delivery for Mills, which Somerset opens. He tells Mills, who is struggling to ignore Jonathan Doe's comments, that the severed head of his wife Tracy lies inside the box. Here, Spacey is at his best as he recounts how he visited Tracy after Mills left for work and tried to play husband. Independantly wealthy Doe, envied the fruits of a common man's life, and thus is guilty of ENVY. Appalled and vengeful, Mills pulls out his gun and dramaticaly contemplates killing Doe. Somerset tries to stop him, arguing that Doe's revelations only stand if he is killed for his sin of Envy, and if Mills is the one who kills him and so becomes the embodiment of WRATH. "If you kill him, he wins," says Somerset. The distraught and emotional Mills, very much in line with the character Pitt has contrived, is overcome by the tragedy of the death of his wife and their unborn baby, whom he did not know existed until Doe told him. He shoots the killer in the head. Jonathan Doe drops dead, victorious.
In the final scene, Mills is naturally placed under arrest. Somerset is assured by his superior that, when in prison, Mills will be taken care of. The film concludes when, in voice-over, sirens wailing in the background, Somerset says "Ernest Hemingway once wrote; the world is a fine place, and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part."
Soundtrack
The opening credit music was a remix of the song Closer by Nine Inch Nails
See Also
External links
- Seven at IMDb
- Seven at All Movie Guide