As the movie turns 27, let’s reflect on Fincher’s initial excursion into a serial killer narration.
[Warning: Spoilers ahead / Wall of text]
Se7en has retained its value for nearly 3 decades if for no other reason than what’s in the fucking box, yet Alien 3 has been forgotten due to public disgrace, the shadow of its 2 predecessors and the disastrous production. Some can say that Se7en is where David Fincher’s filmography really gets started, and it’s appropriate for a deeply distrustful filmmaker to start with a movie that despises human nature, kills the good using multiple methods, and even exhibits a tad of admiration for its vile murderer. The film displays a stylised realism that taps into a decaying, fetid environment, but does so without pinpointing a specific location by drowning the unidentified city in rain and sinking the shots into darkness and low angles. Beauty simply exists in cruelty, in that way.
David Fincher ultimately had a chance to shine in Se7en. He finally had to escape the dreary hellhole of production Alien 3, a trap that turned into a prison. He thought he might never create another film once more and came back to making music videos, but when Se7en came around, he fully committed to a “meditation on evil and how evil gets on you and you can’t get it off.” Fincher didn’t come back holding out his hand. He returned with a clenched fist.
Even though John Doe (Kevin Spacey) isn’t introduced to us till nearly the final moments of the film, Fincher’s opening credits take us right inside his thoughts. The frigid open only serves as a sad prelude to the horror we’re about to see, yet Doe’s approach is artfully done. Fincher claims that Doe has “more enthusiasm than technique,” but I respectfully disagree. The practice of extending the Sloth victim’s survival to last for a year indeed required great willpower, yet it was also impossible without certain skills, which is acknowledged by Morgan Freeman’s Somerset. Doe is undoubtedly zealous, but he’s also specific, meticulous, and nearly entirely uncompromising—except when he’s cornered, in which case he still manages to benefit from it. Tell me if this illustration makes you think of somebody.
It’s not just the theme or the well-known twist that render Se7en classic. Fincher struck a balance between the realistic and the stylised, which is why. Nowhere in this world is as consistently awful as the unidentified city since it is disconnected from time and space. While the rest of the detectives in the station already use computers, Somerset would resort to a typewriter instead. It’s not a 90s movie, other than the fact that it probably couldn’t be done under today’s all-or-nothing studio paradigm, but it makes us feel like we’re traveling to the 90s world despite the lack of pop culture references, ads, or other era indicators. Comparing this to Zodiac, in which the setting is firmly in the 1970s, Fincher notes that “sin is not modern.” It never dates.
Fincher doesn’t manage to make the unidentified city attractive throughout the entire film, despite its ubiquitous ugliness. Even while the crimes are horrifying, Somerset and Brad Pitt’s Mills aren’t fundamentally broken. In the frigid opening, Somerset, who is aware that he cannot stay there any more, is nonetheless concerned about if a young child witnessed a horrific crime. An idealistic couple, Mills and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Tracy, have become lost in the underworld. They were high school lovers, and Mills accepted the position of a detective because he “felt he might do some good,” and given his line of work, a few of his relationships are rather nutty. The young couple even felt they weren’t being conned into purchasing a house where a train passes by, which is somewhat kind of sinister symbolism á the city outside greatly shakes their home foundations.
Despite the alluring cinematography and design, the positivity in these interactions is plainly an essential lifeboat since without it, we would drown in the bizarre environment. As Fincher delves into the depths of a terrible world made even more ugly by John Doe’s misdeeds, Se7en is a beautiful case in opposites. However, the setting is quite cautious. Fincher just uses a handheld camera when he feels compelled to during the foot chase with Mills and Doe. Fincher manages to maintain consistency throughout the movie, an especially good trick given that the control of the scene is completely upset by the Sloth victim still being “alive” while the SWAT squad storms the Sloth victim’s residence.
Despite John Doe’s insanity, Fincher has a terrible regard for him as an artist. Plainly tying up the Sloth victim or forcing the Greed victim to remove some flesh wasn’t sufficient. In the case of Gluttony, the victim simply experienced pure execution, as the obese man is fed until he bursts out. The obese man is fed until he is bursting. However, John Doe gives the Greed victim a scale; puts the pine tree air fresheners all over the house of the Sloth victim; writes the sin illustration across the Pride victim’s vanity picture. When it comes to the Lust victim, it is unseeable for us as the room is too twisted to be entered. These additions are obviously a section of John Doe’s expression beyond simply stating the sin, making them more impactful for both his and the movie’s audience. Fincher doesn’t alter it, though. The only moment John Doe’s plan doesn’t work as he intends is in the handheld scene, which is also the lone interruption, partly by necessity.
Fair enough, but the complex strategy itself—not simply the lavish crime scenes—is something that can only occur in a movie. John Doe puts the very first clue behind a refrigerator, expecting that a police officer will be astute enough to realize that the floor shavings would point to that hint since the detectives are a necessary part of his devised plan. In order for forensics to dust the wall for fingerprints, John would have to ensure that the Greed victim’s widow knew that the painting was turned around. He can even shorten his timeline after approaching Mills and Somerset and attempting to murder them in the corridor because his plan is adaptable enough to do so. We can make up justifications, but the script’s tightness makes these errors more obvious. Despite this, none of the flaws affect the film’s performance as we’ve been conditioned to agree with serial killer logic in films, and the movie isn’t truly centered on the specifics of his scheme much as it focuses on the meaning of that scheme.
The seven cardinal virtues—chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility—exist in correlation with the seven deadly sins. Due to a lack of virtue, these are never mentioned in the film. It’s not that Se7en’s universe exemplifies every transgression that Doe encounters everyday, or even that Doe is correct. He has a problem with how easily we accept sin, which renders virtue useless.
Doe obviously depicts “Wrath” when the sins are taken into account. It’s the only way to execute and subject people to torture, but Mills receives the blame from Doe. Mills also needs to “become” Wrath. It is a transference that embodies the movie’s underlying thesis of the pervasiveness of sin. An obviously bad person must be killed by a man who has come to “do some good,” but Mills doesn’t murder John because he is evil. He’s killing him out of sheer retaliation, retaliation that the public can understand.
Doe nonchalantly accepts “envy” rather than acknowledge “Wrath” as his own sin, and it’s nearly because there isn’t anything else. He speaks it out with a sigh, “I envy the life of a regular man.” It is but one more sin in a world full of them. John Doe commits it as if it were merely a sorrowful certainty, despite the fact that he sees it as a casual sin he observes on a regular basis. This contradicts Mills’, whose very inner side must make a difficult decision.
Since there is so much more outside of the box, I must admit that I get a little confused when everything comes down to “What’s in the fucking box.” People mistakenly recall the box because it has become so prevalent. Fincher vehemently denied that Se7en began as “torture porn” in an interview with The Guardian, and he revealed that he “almost had a fist-fight with a woman at a Beverly Hills cocktail party because she said ‘There is no need to make a stand in of Gwyneth Paltrow’s head to find in the box. You don’t need to see that.’ And I said, ‘Well, we didn’t.’ And she said, ‘Oh yes, you did.’
What people remember most about the ending is how brave it was. They watched a distressing, deep, and gloomy movie, and they were in need of some brightness. Maybe some thought they deserved it. Fincher was drawn to the project, though, for the completely opposite reason. He told The Guardian:
“So this script was floating around and my agent, who’s very sweet and always very hopeful, said, “You know, New Line is interested in this. You might like this, and they might want to make it with you, so maybe you should read it.” So I read it, and got to the end, with the head in the box, and I called him and said, “This is fantastic, this is so great because I had thought it was a police procedural; now it’s this meditation on evil and how evil gets on you and you can’t get it off.” And he said, “What are you talking about?” And I talked about the whole head-in-the-box thing, she’s been dead for hours and there’s no bullshit chase across town and the guy driving on sidewalks to get to the woman, who’s drawing a bath while the serial killer sneaks in the back window. And he goes, “Oh, they sent you the wrong draft.” [audience laughs] And he sent me the right draft, and there was a guy driving across town on sidewalks, serial killer sneaking in the back window.”
The Se7en we received was largely a result of Fincher and producer Mike De Luca‘s cunning and deception. Fincher had avoided the obstructions he had encountered with Alien3 this time. Since “it’s always going to be your fault,” was the takeaway from Alien 3, why not claim complete credit whether individuals choose to follow through or not? Despite being a failure, Alien 3 is undoubtedly the most significant film in Fincher’s growth as a filmmaker. The lesson could have been that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar if he had used the movie as his test case and the production went smoothly and the film was only moderately successful. Rather than that, Fincher discovered that a bug zapper gets rid of more flies and that there is no use in constructing something if you are not intending to make it your own way and put your best effort into it. That was evident as he left the Steve Jobs film project recently. It is not worth making if it is not going to be risky, uncomfortable, and “scar”.
The film’s final scene elevates it above the status of a crime drama, yet it merely represents the climax of the preceding events. Since it would be such a sharp disparity to the rest of the frightening moments, I’ll be honest and say I’m at a loss of words as to how the film may wrap.
In a film where Leland Orser‘s character freaks out in the interrogation room (a moment that thrills me every single time), how can there be a happy ending? Granted, those sequences are unsettling in part due to the way they were filmed and put together, but the idea of a last-ditch foot chase to catch the murderer is intended to appease the viewer and give them hope that there will be some sort of karmic justice if you can just outrun your cunning adversary.
In relation to what happened previously, it is hopeful but unrealistic. Se7en is also unreal, on a surface level, truthfully. Because not all of what John Doe speaks is completely wrong, the movie’s heart is what is authentic.
When it comes to your mind that, “I don’t agree with this madman, but I see his point,” it feels a bit unsettling. The reality of Se7en is in the sins and how they don’t stay in a neat little box where a detective solves a case and the sin goes away. Fincher commented: “I look at Se7en and I see something that was trying to be very realistic. It may be incredibly stylized but it was always in the tension. The thing that was forefront of my mind: how to make it rotting and how to make it real.”
David Fincher had to have the success of Se7en to launch his cinematic career, yet his subsequent movies seemed weirdly more focused on moviemaking than narrative.
Se7en was the success David Fincher needed to begin his film career in earnest, but his follow-up was oddly more concerned with filmmaking than storytelling.
