Se7en (1995) is the recipient of two Saturn Awards for Best Writing (Andrew Kevin Walker) and Best Make-Up (Jean Ann Black, Rob Bottin); the movie also received one nomination at the Oscars for Best Film Editing. Se7en acquired 29 awards from 1995-1999 and was directed by David Fincher, the same director of Fight Club. The screenplay was an original piece written by Andrew Kevin Walker and was influenced by his time spent in New York City while trying to make it as a writer. It makes you think about what Walker went through during those years in NYC. Despite the film's lack of following and accolades, it is rated 19th on the IMDb Top 250 Films list. I have just been made aware that the list changes and fluctuates constantly. Wish I knew that sooner.
The movie stars Brad Pitt as Detective David Mills and Morgan Freeman as Detective Lieutenant William Somerset. Co-stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey, R. Lee Ermey, and John C. McGinley make an appearance in the film. All the filming took place in California; principal photography was in Los Angeles, while the last scene was filmed near Lancaster. The movie follows the story of detectives Mills and Somerset, who hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth) as his motives. Throughout the movie, the audience is told by Mills that John Doe (the murderer) is a lunatic. How does Mills try to convince himself of Doe's insanity, and how does Doe prove Mills wrong?
There's one thing everyone can agree on: John Doe was crazy. He believed he was doing God's work by violently murdering people who committed one of the seven deadly sins. However, he's not crazy in the cartoonish way that Mills wants him to be. He's a far more sinister and dangerous combination of insanity, narcissism, patience, and planning, making him more dangerous because he believes that the murders he performs are helping the world and therefore helping him get into Heaven. Mills thinks that Doe is a run-of-the-mill criminally insane person. He wants to demean John Doe to make him a less intimidating figure: "he's probably dancing around in his grandma's panties, rubbing himself in peanut butter," unfortunately, Doe is the opposite of what Mills wants him to be. When Somerset reveals the books that Doe checked out of the library, Mills gets nervous seeing the titles. In an attempt to discredit Doe further, he reduces him to the level of a regular crazy: "Just because the fucker's got a library card doesn't make him Yoda." In another attempt to undermine Doe, he says one of the funniest lines in the movie: "The voices made me do it. My dog made me do it. Jodie Foster told me to do it." "Jodie Foster" references John Hinckley, Jr., who shot Ronald Reagan to impress the actress. Obviously, it didn't work.
Before Doe was labeled a serial killer, everyone in the office believed that Somerset was overreacting to the murders. Afterward, the Captain comes in and tells the detectives that they know nothing about Doe except that "he's independently wealthy, well educated, and totally insane." The Captain jumps on the "John Doe is insane" bandwagon because the more murders they discover, the harder it is to believe that anyone reasonably sane could be committing them. But, what is a "sane" murder, anyway?
Through the second half of the film, Somerset's job is to comb through Doe's 2,000 notebooks. Besides killing people, the craziest thing Doe does might be compiling these notebooks and placing them "on the shelves in no discernible order." How does a sane person dump their notebooks on a shelf and not sort it out somehow? Not even chronologically? Seems unreasonable to me. In these journals, John Doe shares his thoughts on the state of the world and humanity: "What sick ridiculous puppets we are. What a gross little stage we dance on. What fun we have dancing, fucking, not a care in the world. Not knowing that we are nothing. We are not what was intended." This is one of Doe's crazier thoughts, and it sounds like he's quite the nihilist here. On the flip side, Doe describes exactly what Somerset feels in different wording. Is Somerset crazy too? If Somerset agrees with Doe's sentiments, what's the point of the whole case and mission?
There are many ways that Se7en tries to elaborate on the nuances of madness. Madness and insanity themselves are a paradox: you can't know someone's insane unless you are insane. It's like when Mill's said that there are "so many freaks out there doing their little evil deeds they don't want to do," we can't know for sure what the definition of madness and insanity is. Are people who are "mad" acting against their will? If so, does this make John Doe mad? He definitely wants to be doing what he's doing. Se7en was the first movie of Brad Pitt's that made me believe that he was a skilled actor. Seeing his performance in this movie is entirely different from his usual roles, and it's a great refresher.
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