SE7EN At 30 – The Box Is Still Working
Last night, I saw David Fincher’s SE7EN (sure, I suppose I should type out the word, but since that’s what the titles showed, I’ll go with the trendier version) in IMAX at the local AMC. This was a new restoration for the upcoming 4K physical release – Fincher actually remastered it in 8K but I assume that was beyond the abilities of our multiplex’s projector – and it was the first time I’d seen it theatrically since its release in 1995. Maybe I’m showing my age a bit, but when I first saw SE7EN I was floored, by the direction, the story, the cinematography, and it’s great to know that it still holds a lot of power, even after three decades, a metric ton of memes, and many multiple viewings on my part.
What I didn’t expect, seeing it again, was that it was playing to relatively new and fresh eyes. It wasn’t a sold-out screening by any means, but there were quite a few people there, of mixed ages, and it became obvious quickly that many in the audience hadn’t seen it before. Lines that I knew by heart were being heard anew and people were reacting to them in ways that I could only vaguely remember doing so that first time I saw it. What surprised me was the humor of SE7EN – at least in that first act. The banter between Morgan Freeman’s Somerset and Brad Pitt’s Mills has (at first, anyway) a lot of humor and a nice rhythm between the two. Somerset is the worn-out pragmatist, and Mills is the naive optimist, and at first those templates seem ironclad, but as the movie progresses we see cracks in each characters’ protective armor, and that their worldviews aren’t as pat and as solid as they once believed.
But it was during the “Sloth” crime scene, with what is surely one of the great jump-scares of 1990s cinema, that really set the tone – SE7EN isn’t playing around, and the rules that many people have an understanding about weren’t being followed. Although I didn’t see it, I could tell that the person behind me jumped a bit when the scare hit, and based on that and other reactions from the audience, I knew we were in for a ride. There are few movies that go as dark as SE7EN does. It doesn’t pull punches, and the film lulls the audience into a false feeling of security and then pulls the rug out from beneath them. It also helps to have a bit of context – SE7EN came in at the tail-end of the heyday of the police procedural genre, and audiences at the time were used to seeing their protagonists win, as they smile knowingly at each other across the bar, and send the audience home knowing that good prevailed, evil was punished, and fun times were had. SE7EN shoots a grimy middle finger to all of that. SE7EN stops being fun after “Sloth”, and becomes something else, something dangerous, like a drugged tiger that’s coming around.
Again, I’ve seen SE7EN many times. David Fincher has about five masterpieces to his name, and ranking them would be a futile exercise, but SE7EN is a movie Fincher made after making ALIEN3, which he had such a bad time on that he almost gave up being a feature filmmaker altogether. There’s a rawness to SE7EN that isn’t there in his subsequent work. He is a director of precision and control, and SE7EN has moments that feel a little more chaotic and random, but fit with what the film is trying to accomplish. It makes the film feel more real as a result, and while I adore many of Fincher’s films after SE7EN, there’s an immediacy to this one that’s not as present in his later work. There’s a scene in a police car, as Pitt’s Mills is describing pulling out his weapon in the line of duty for the first time, and while Mills is telling the story there’s a crack in the non-stop rain of the city where the sun shines through the car window for a moment. I don’t know how true this is, but it wasn’t planned that way on set, it just happened, but Fincher knew he had captured something special, so it stayed in. It’s such a beautiful shot, full of meaning and portent, and it makes the movie. I still think about that scene, years after I first saw it, and seeing it on that IMAX screen solidified that moment to me as a cinematic all-timer.
SE7EN has one of the darkest endings in all of cinema, and the studio fought Fincher tooth-and-nail against it, but that was a victory that Fincher won. When Kevin Spacey’s John Doe reveals the scope of his plotting, and leaves Mills utterly destroyed, I could hear the audience suck in its collective breath. Thirty years later, it still packs a punch. The ending of SE7EN isn’t nihilistic for the sake of nihilism, either. It’s a warning, and while it can be interpreted many ways, to me, it’s about the sickening corruption of faith, and this idea that these structures that we have built to protect those we love and the ideals we cherish is so much smoke and mirrors. Fincher and writer Andrew Kevin Walker have shown us a world where evil triumphs – even worse, this evil is done with the passion that only the truly righteous can adhere to. John Doe thinks he is doing a genuinely good thing for the world, as he sees it. He has so misunderstood the message of his faith that it has become twisted for his own purposes, and thirty years later, we have seen that happen far too often. Our daily news is filled with it.
SE7EN’s message is, unfortunately, still timely and relevant. There is something dark and malignant at the heart of America. As Doe says, “People will barely be able to comprehend, but they won’t be able to deny.” When Doe turns to Somerset, in his final moments, and says, “Oh. He didn’t know,” I could feel the chill as those in the audience who hadn’t seen the film before began to understand what was about to happen. For so long at the time of SE7EN’s initial release, Mills’ choice was debated, but in 2024, we now know, with certainty, that violence is self-sustaining, and is never satisfied. The best of us know that Mills destroyed himself in his rage, and the worst of us will cheer him on from the sidelines. As Somerset tells us in the film’s final lines, “Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.” Thirty years later, the heart’s filthy lesson continues to fall upon deaf ears.
