Rish's Reviews
Seven (I refuse to call it "Se7en") is a unique movie. I saw it on its first release, in the ancient year of 1995. It disturbed me. I wasn't used to films as dark and graphic and bleak as this, and I didn't enjoy myself. I wrote in my journal, "This movie made The Silence of the Lambs look like Mary Poppins." But I was unable to ignore the craft, the artistry. And it stuck with me--all these years. I never saw it again (until now), but I remembered images vividly, themes, lines of dialogue. It was one of the most disturbing and memorable films of my life.
Morgan Freeman plays the world-weary soon-to-retire detective Sommerset, just partnered with the young and idealistic David Mills (Brad Pitt) who has a good wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) and a good outlook on life. But then the killings begin. Killings based around the Seven Deadly Sins (Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Wrath), each more horrible than the last. As the case goes on, both cops question their convictions, and an audience raised on happy endings starts to wonder just what they're in store for at the end.
Seven is more Mystery than Horror, but I'll put tyranist's wedding video on this website if I want to. From its effed-up opening credits, the film is disturbing. Throughout, it paints a world that is wet, drab, gray, and depressing. The film is quite sick, but it's also very very good. The screenplay is brilliant. The performances too. The film's villain, John Doe, is the most brilliant serial killer in a movie since Hannibal Lecter. Something that shocked me in 1995 was how much what he had to say made sense, how much I found myself relating to him and his words. Seeing it again all these years later, that shocks me quite a bit less.
Quote To Remember: "He's experienced about as much pain and suffering as anyone I've ever encountered, give or take, and he still has Hell to look forward to."
I'd Recommend It To: Seven is not for everybody. But I think it would affect everybody.

The tyranist's thoughts
I think that modern American culture has mostly lost contact with the enterainment value of tragedy. We've been convinced that the happy ending is what we want and that if everything doesn't work out just right in the end, well, then it was lying to us, wasn't it?
But there's value in sadness and melancholy and in having to deal with stories that don't end well. It seems that most of our Western literary and mythological tradition ended poorly for the participants until just in the twentieth century when Disney sort of took over and insisted that we needed something much brighter. Fully a third of Shakespeare's plays are labeled tragedies and many of the historical plays end up being tragedies as well. These plays were well received and they are still considered high entertainment. So why can't we tell stories with unhappy endings anymore? Why is it that the audience must be left feeling like things are going to be alright?
Tragedy is not completely absent today. We have film noir and the current descendents of film noir. Movies where realism and darkness and melancholy are important. Movies in which when things start to go badly you can just see the suffering characters realise that it might get much worse from here.
Seven is such a movie. It is a tragedy in the purest Shakespearian sense. And it is beautiful and brilliant in its grimmness. It is a movie in which as the action progresses the emotional state of our actors gets worse and worse. And it is all driving toward and end that is shattering in its devastation.
But we've learned something along the way. We've seen that evil can be seductive and as Rish pointed out, it can make a lot of sense. We've seen that standing on the side of justice means making impossible choices. We've seen that even when witnessing the worst of what humanity can throw at us, it helps to have someone near to share the burden. But that even that can be taken away.
I loved Seven, but I'm predisposed to look at tragedies favourably. Melancholy is a lost emotion, but one that I find sweet. This movie granted me more than a few moments of melancholy and I'm grateful for it. I think everyone should see this and taste a bit of that sadness, but I know many will probably read this review and decide that they're better off looking for the film with a happy ending. And that too makes me sad.