David Fincher (1995)
Seven days and a murder each day, each murder designed (in every sense) as a punishment for, or expression of, one of the seven deadly sins. It sounds a nifty idea for a thriller and Se7en is an absorbing and technically accomplished piece of work (especially in the editing, by Richard Francis-Bruce). But it’s alienating too – a picture for people who find it easier than me to enjoy clever film-making regardless of the moral implications of a story or a style, or both. The typography of the title epitomises Se7en‘s cool. That of the opening credits – scratchy shots of razor blades and other sharp objects and primitive manuscript that calls to mind the notes that jocose sadistic killers sometimes leave at the scene of the crime (in fiction anyway) – endorses it. The action is set in a city which remains unnamed but looks a ringer for New York. David Fincher and his cinematographer Darius Khondji create an atmosphere that convinces you the location is actually hell. What illumination there is seems infernal; it’s raining nearly non-stop and the precipitation feels putrid. Se7en is so strongly claustrophobic that it’s a relief when, in the closing stages, we move out of the city into desert land – even though this is in preparation for a conclusion that you know will be grim.
The two detectives in pursuit of the serial killer are William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and David Mills (Brad Pitt), polar opposites and often uncomfortable with each other. Somerset is reserved, widely read, infinitely regretful – he’s about to leave the force because he’s had enough of the relentless human viciousness that fills his days. Mills is cocky, impatient, uncultured – he asked for a transfer back to this nightmarish big city. The youth vs experience pairing is echoed in the casting: except in a couple of scenes, Pitt is crudely uninteresting and too aware of the camera; Freeman is ingeniously, subtly magnetic. (The tyro-old pro set-up and the gulf in skill recall Tom Cruise and Paul Newman in The Color of Money.) When Mills’ wife improbably invites Somerset to supper at the couple’s apartment, she tells him she knew the first time she met David that he was the man she’d spend her life with. This can only have been because of his looks: Brad Pitt suggests less a hothead than a dummkopf.
Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay has plenty of cultural references to drive home the contrasts between Somerset and Mills, decorate the serial killing story and impress audiences with Walker’s (and our own) literacy – Dante, Chaucer, Milton. (In perhaps the least credible moment of the film, Mills appears to get through York Notes-type digests of all three of them in the course of a morning.) Walker’s last piece of showing off is having Somerset, persuaded by the dreadful events of the week to stick with his job, quote Hemingway: ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for’. ‘I agree with the second part,’ adds Somerset. Gwyneth Paltrow has a lovely blend of fragility and humour as Mills’ wife and Kevin Spacey (uncredited until the end titles) plays the killer with disorienting charm and verve. Yet if all the acting were as shallow as Brad Pitt’s I think I’d have found the film less lowering because easier to dismiss. Morgan Freeman is one of the best reasons for watching Se7en but also the main reason why I wish I hadn’t.
16 November 2010
