SEVEN
A film review by Ken Furlong
Copyright 1995 Ken Furlong
Starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and Gwyneth Paltrow Written by Andrew Kevin Walker Directed by David Fincher New Line Cinema
The opening credit sequence of any film can tell you a great deal about the director's emotional attachment to the task at hand. Occasionally, an inspired director will hire Elaine and Saul Bass, who are credited with creating some of the most memorable opening credit sequences in American film history. Remember PSYCHO? Scorsese's remake of CAPE FEAR?
The nightmarish world of David Fincher's SEVEN opens with the daring and detail that one would expect from a careful, dark combination of manipulation and terror. The film is beautiful in its dark tones, in the way an armchair melts to black in a corner of the screen with the rain falling hard, even like a sheet. There is a desperation present in this film that is tangible in the way paint can sometimes be. A street corner, a lonely bedroom takes on the mellow, moody tone of a Hopper glow, slowly exposing a black and white world in colour.
SEVEN actually looks black and white in some of these early compositions and the spare dialogue, the quiet looks allow you to linger and explore in the darkness. Fincher possesses a solid vision of urban sickness, and he leaves you wanting more.
All this production design lends an accomplished touch to a simple plot. Veteran homicide detective (Morgan Freeman) gets assigned a young, volatile partner (Brad Pitt) in a serial killer case of Biblical proportions. Freeman does an exceptional job at convincing us of the loneliness and frustration of a cop who's spent a lifetime trying to create an impossible personal/urban environment where no one gets hurt. In a role that depends more on gesture than speech, he has delivered a performance as graceful as anything he's done. It is a textured portrait of dedication that prefers to communicate through a look rather than a line. Of course, he sees his raw partner as he once saw himself. Hopeful, passionate, destined to fail.
It's corny. It's derivative. With the right direction and casting, it works every time.
It's the structural, manipulative gymnastics that always leave the audience feeling worked over in the creepy, appealing ride of a confident thriller. But suspense and terror, though attractive, can't always be enough. SEVEN successfully keeps you busy enough to ignore its flaws; the unnecessary buddy movie humour, the female figure as plot necessity. It does so by following a carefully constructed and boldly executed structure that allows an audience little energy to reflect, to analyse.
One obvious example is a chase scene of Hitchcockian dimensions engineered and placed very carefully in the centre of the film. It is one of the main reasons David Fincher should be recognised as a major visual stylist.
Brad Pitt, when given the right role (young, ambitious, and a little on the dull side) has finally proven he can deliver. His work is actually believable here.
But the real star of this black, oppressive mass is the urban hell that seeps from the screen in every interior, every impressionist study. Fincher has created a world that is at once completely over the top and completely authentic. While confidently creating mystery in its imperfections, SEVEN hints at a director who may be ready for more than manipulation.
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