Extraordinary Style; Gimmicky Plot

David Fincher’s Se7en (1995) is one of those movies that I have to talk about on two different planes: one in terms of plot, the other in terms of visual style.

I don’t hate the plot of Se7en, but I don’t love it either. Although I will admit to having a secret love of religious-based serial killers (my hatred of religion feels even more justified every time there’s some religious fanatic who decides to start killing people in the name of his merciful god), this one feels a bit on the gimmicky, cliché side. I think maybe this is an unfortunate side-effect of the popularity of The Silence of the Lambs and the brilliance of the Hannibal Lecter character. After that movie, everyone wanted to create the next highly-literate, charismatic madman. But the literary allusions in Se7en feel forced and contrived, causing the effect to fall flat. Furthermore, the idea that the government keeps track of library cards is rather ludicrous. Even in today’s post-9/11, Patriot Act paranoia, the idea reeks of Oliver Stone-levels of conspiracy theory. The overall result is a story that struggles to allow us to maintain our suspension of disbelief. It is still possible, however, to understand and appreciate the movie Se7en as a modern morality parable. When looked at in this light, the suspension of disbelief shifts with the expectation of the genre. We expect our crime stories to be realistic; a parable or a fable has a lot more wiggle room on the believability scale. It becomes much easier to overlook the un-reality of the show, if your generic expectations allow you to accept a certain level of un-reality.

Another place where I think Fincher missed a really golden opportunity was in waiting for a third-act entrance of Kevin Spacey as the criminal mastermind. Spacey’s flair for playing the twisted psychopath is (as is evidenced in The Usual Suspects (Singer, 1995)) is wasted on what amounts to little more than a cameo role. Pitting Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey against each other in an on-screen battle of wits would have produced, in my opinion, a much more satisfying plot.

But for all its plotting faults, Se7en is a visually stunning movie of extraordinary style. While many critics have accused it over being overly gory and lacking the finesse and subtlety of suspense masters like Hitchcock, who used what NOT shown every bit as much as what WAS shown to create their sense of horror, I think the atmosphere created by Fincher’s highly stylized form is masterful. The film contains impossibly dark, gritty images that create an almost suffocating sense of urban decay to match the film’s theme of moral degradation. The crumbling buildings, dark interiors, striking contrasts, and rain-washed streets echo back to the equally-stylized noir film—films that were also infamous for their exploration of the less-savory side of the human race.

Overall, Se7en is a pretty good movie. Although the plot contrivances could have put me off, they didn’t because I was able to see the film as a parable, rather than an actual retelling. Once I was able to overcome that, I could settle in and enjoy the spectacular visuality of the film form.