Seven: A Retrospective
Once upon a time in the 4th Century there was a monk named Evagrius Ponticus. He was born in the Roman province of Helenopontus (now modern-day northern Turkey) and his travels took him as far as Constantinople and Jerusalem. He lived a harsh ascetic existence that made most other monks seem hedonistic in comparison: He avoided bathing and ate his food raw, rejecting meat, fruit, and vegetables. He also slept only a few hours a night, for snoozing wasted time that could be spent in prayer and acute self-reflection.
With such an extreme outlook on life, Ponticus felt that other monks were a bit too decadent for his liking. To help get them on the straight and narrow, he developed the concept of “eight evil thoughts” that distracted from their spiritual duties. They were: Gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sloth, sadness, vainglory, and pride.
As Ponticus’s ideas spread to the Western Christian church and found their way into Latin, the line-up changed to seven thanks to Pope Gregory I in the 6th Century. The principle was that if you committed one of these sins and failed to repent sufficiently, your soul would die and you would be doomed to spend eternity in damnation.
Thomas Aquinas revised the list in the 13th Century and created the definitive seven deadly sins that survive today: Gluttony, sloth, greed, lust, envy, anger, and pride. The concept persisted over the centuries in medieval art and literature and eventually entered pop culture when, around 700 years later, they would provide the high-concept hook for a ground-breaking serial killer movie.
Serial killers have been around in cinema since Fritz Lang’s M (1931), but didn’t fully take off as a genre until the smash critical and commercial success of The Silence of the Lambs six decades later.
Jonathan Demme’s superior potboiler achieved unprecedented success, becoming the first horror movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture, and also became only the third film to win the “Big Five” Academy Awards (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay) after It Happened One Night (1934) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). It also embedded itself instantly in popular culture and kick-started the ‘90s serial killer craze that can still be felt today in the surfeit of grisly crime shows on Netflix.
Many of the films that followed Lambs in the ‘90s were inferior copycats, including one called Copycat (1995). One stood out from all the rest not only in terms of originality and impact, but also in its subsequent influence on the genre: David Fincher’s Seven (also 1995).
The plot of Fincher’s film fitted nicely into the ‘90s roster of high-concept thrillers: In a nameless and perpetually rain-lashed city, an ingenious serial killer uses the seven deadly sins as the template for a gruesome murder spree designed to reveal the debauchery and depravity of modern life. Ageing detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is a week short of retirement when he reluctantly takes the case, paired up with David Mills (Brad Pitt), a hot-headed young detective eager to make a difference. Unknown to them, the killer plans to make one of them a big part of his infernal sermon.
The somewhat hackneyed elements of the plot – grizzled old cop taking one last case before retirement and mismatched detectives grudgingly developing respect for one another - work in the film’s favour. Thanks to Andrew Kevin Walker’s cunning screenplay, we have the rug brutally pulled out from under us every time we think we’re on familiar territory. Not least in the stunning finale, which is perhaps the most shockingly downbeat in ‘90s Hollywood cinema.
While no doubt influenced by The Silence of the Lambs, Seven’s inception came from a very different place. Demme’s film was an assured adaptation of Thomas Harris’s intelligent page-turner, which in turn was inspired by Alfredo Ballí Treviño, a small and dapper serial killer the author met while visiting a Mexican prison as a journalist in the ‘60s.
Walker’s original screenplay, on the other hand, was born from a place of genuine despair and disillusionment. In the same year that Lambs was released, Walker was working as a sales assistant at a New York branch of Tower Records. He’d moved to the Big Apple five years earlier from suburban Pennsylvania and was unhappily suffering from culture shock at a time when the city’s social problems were very evident on the street. He decided to use this as inspiration to write a screenplay that would make him wealthy enough to escape his humdrum existence and get out of the city. He said:
Walker struck upon the idea that you could take a walk and see a deadly sin on every corner. What would happen if a highly intelligent madman took exception and decided to teach society a lesson that no-one would ever forget?
He wrote the screenplay for Seven while working the day job and sent it to David Koepp, a writer who was working on Jurassic Park at the time. Koepp read it and called him back. Walker remembered:
Italian production company Penta Films optioned the script and Walker received the bare minimum fee allowed, but it was enough for him to quit his job and move to Hollywood. Penta hired Jeremiah Chechik to direct the picture, known at that time for successfully helming National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The man behind a goofy holiday flick was an odd choice for a vision as dark as Walker’s, and Penta and Chechik wanted to make significant changes… especially to that gruesome sucker-punch ending. Despite his misgivings, Walker dutifully rewrote the script with a more generic thriller finale, turning in up to 13 drafts before the studio was satisfied.
Luckily for us, Penta Films went bust in 1994 and Walker’s screenplay was picked up by producer Arnold Kopelson and New Line Cinema. Chechik also departed the project. Guillermo del Toro was one director in the frame to take over, and the screenplay also found its way to David Fincher.
Fincher had started out his career directing TV commercials and music videos, most notably George Michael’s Freedom ‘90, Michael Jackson’s Who Is It, and Madonna’s iconic Vogue. A step into filmmaking beckoned, and his debut must have seemed like a dream come true at the time: Alien 3.
The project was deeply troubled, however, starting production without a finished screenplay after several writers had taken a crack at it. The result was a grim and uneven picture that satisfied absolutely nobody, and Fincher took much of the blame. Denied the final cut, his experience on the film almost made him quit Hollywood for good, stating: "I'd rather die of colon cancer than make another movie.”
He returned to making music videos before Seven landed on his desk. By a quirk of good fortune, Fincher received a version of the screenplay with Walker’s original horrific ending. It piqued his interest enough to enter talks to direct the picture. The studio realised the mistake and sent him a copy of the script with the revised ending, but Fincher wasn’t interested in making that movie. He found an ally in Michael De Luca, New Line’s President of Production, and together they forced Walker’s original vision into production, despite the continued efforts from Kopelson and other studio execs to change the ending and the overall pitch-black tone of the film.
Their stance gained further traction when the cast signed up. Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and Kevin Spacey all supported Walker’s undiluted script – indeed, Pitt only signed up on the condition that the head-in-a-box shocker remained intact. Eventually, Kopelson also threw his weight behind it on the condition that the head would not be shown on screen. The stage was set for a denouement that would cement Seven’s reputation as a modern classic.
Casting was a key part of Seven’s success. Freeman won the role of Somerset after Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, and Al Pacino all turned it down. He is the weary heart of the movie, a good and intelligent man who has become tired and sceptical in the face of all the horrors he has seen.
Freeman’s screen career began in the early ‘70s but he was a late bloomer, making a late breakthrough with an Oscar-nominated turn as a vicious pimp in Street Smart (1987). He was then 50 years old. Another high-profile role followed in Edward Zwick’s Glory, after which he received another Oscar nod for Driving Miss Daisy (1989). From that point, he began carving out a niche as quiet and noble men, following up with unforgettable roles in Unforgiven (1992) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). It is this calm persona that informs the role of Detective William Somerset from the get-go; we know who this character is from the moment we lay eyes on him.
For the role of David Mills, Fincher lucked out with Pitt as he was making his rapid ascent to superstardom. He had made several screen appearances before his breakout performance playing a hunky hustler in Thelma & Louise (1991), catching the eye with less than ten minutes of screentime that fast-tracked his career to leading man status. Within a few years, he was headlining in high-profile movies like A River Runs Through It (1992), Interview with the Vampire, and Legends of the Fall (both 1994).
1995 was Pitt’s big year, in which he also earned an Oscar nomination with a kooky role as an eco warrior and suspected civilisation-ending terrorist in Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. The role of Mills was arguably more challenging and Pitt put in an edgy performance to reiterate that he wasn’t just a pretty face, something he had already tried to demonstrate playing a redneck serial killer in Kalifornia (1993).
Pitt’s youth and vitality provided a solid contrast to Freeman’s measured, slow-burning style. Mills is an impulsive yet well-meaning detective who has relocated to the city from Hicksville with his childhood sweetheart and finds himself out of his depth as the diabolical scheme unfolds. Pitt described Mills as an “idiot… who speaks before he really knows what he’s talking about.” Walker tweaked the script to make Somerset more literate and intellectual; while the older detective reads Dante’s Inferno, Mills struggles with the Cliff Notes version.
Some critics felt that Pitt wasn’t quite developed enough as an actor to fully pull off the role, but the alternatives could have been worse: Sylvester Stallone rejected the part. On the flip side, Denzel Washington also turned it down.
The third important character who provides Seven with such a human touch is the relatively small part of Tracy, Mills’ wife, putting a brave face on adjusting to life in a violent, grimy, and chaotic city. Fincher saw auditions from around 100 actors for the part and both Robin Wright and Christina Applegate turned it down before Pitt recommended Paltrow, who he had seen audition for Legends of the Fall.
Paltrow’s screen career began the same year Pitt became a heartthrob in Thelma & Louise when Steven Spielberg, her godfather, cast her as young Wendy Darling in Hook (1991) . Playing Tracy was a great role for her. She provides the film’s only note of brightness, which makes her ultimate fate all the more devastating. It launched her to stardom, following up with Emma (1996), Sliding Doors (1998), and an Oscar win for Shakespeare in Love (also 1998).
Lastly, there is Kevin Spacey as John Doe. Ned Beatty was Fincher and Walker’s first pick, but he turned it down because he felt that the script was the most evil thing he’d ever read. Val Kilmer also rejected the part and Michael Stipe of R.E.M fame was touring. R. Lee Ermey also read for the role but his take didn’t satisfy Fincher. Ermey was cast as the tough-talking police captain instead.
Spacey makes such an impact with a relatively small amount of screen time. We are both anticipating and dreading his appearance after seeing his handiwork, and his grand entrance wrong-foots us on two counts. Firstly, he steps into the police station and gives himself up while two murders short of the set. Secondly, he plays Doe with a strange serenity that puts us at constant unease. Other actors might have portrayed him as a drooling maniac, but Spacey wisely went low-key. After seeing what he is capable of, all he needs to do is talk calmly to give us the creeps.
1995 was a big year for Spacey, too, winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his cunning turn as Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects. His name is poison nowadays but he deserves praise for insisting that his name be kept out of Seven’s credits. He smartly reasoned that if Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt were the leads, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that the third-billed actor would be the killer.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the blog, three movies in the mid-’90s turned me from a casual movie buff to an ardent cinephile: Pulp Fiction, Seven, and Trainspotting. They were the films that made me conscious of what a director’s vision and craft really brought to a project, and my passion for looking further behind the curtain started from there.
I remember watching Seven at the cinema with my parents when it first came out in the UK. I was 17 at the time and I’d seen The Silence of the Lambs and a few other serial killer flicks, but they did nothing to prepare me for the experience. I simply hadn’t seen anything like it. I was wracked by a feeling of total dread, peering into the dimly lit crime scenes and fearing what I might see. It made me so claustrophobic that I had the urge to flee the theatre, but the narrative had me hooked and I found it impossible to tear my eyes away from the screen. By the time John Doe arrived, I had absolutely no idea which way the story was going.
Even The Silence of the Lambs counterpointed its gruesome house of horrors with a sense of Grand Guignol theatricality, summed up by the nudge-nudge of Hannibal Lecter’s last line as he prepares to dine on his slimy nemesis. Seven, however, was a harsh slap to the face: It boldly states that Western civilisation is screwed and we’re all sleepwalking in a purgatory of our own design. The city is symbolic of this malaise and, by leaving the bleak urban hell-scape unnamed, it could be any city.
Yet for all that, Seven remains compulsively rewatchable. Fincher’s craft is evident in every frame; it is an artfully constructed film. The pacing is taut and the story unfolds with a sense of dreadful inevitability, and the fantastic cinematography puts us right in the middle of the grisly crime scenes. Those moments are so visceral that we can almost smell the movie, especially when we find Gluttony and Sloth, and the latter provides one of the most expertly-timed jump scares this side of The Exorcist III. Crucially, the movie is so well put-together that knowing the end result doesn’t take away from the enjoyment (if that’s the right word) of watching it unfold again and again.
Seven still clings to a sense of beleaguered humanity. This comes through most strongly in three scenes that a less patient director or studio might have chopped to bring the running time under the two-hour mark. The first is the awkward ice-breaker when Tracy unexpectedly invites Somerset over to dinner at their new apartment. Her innate good-will helps thaw the friction between the two detectives and a tentative bond is formed, with a well-needed moment of laughter when it is revealed that the realtor sold the couple a lemon next to a noisy railway track.
Later, there is the heartfelt scene when Tracy meets Somerset in a diner and confides in him about her difficulty adapting to life in the city, and that she is pregnant. It’s another quiet character moment that reveals a lot about the struggling young wife and the older detective, and there is a sense that these interactions with Tracy helps the solitary Somerset reconnect with ordinary life.
Then there is the library sequence, which overlaps with a similar musical moment in The Shawshank Redemption. At first glance, it plays out almost as a literary training montage as Somerset visits the public library at night to do some further research on the seven deadly sins.
There is a large balcony where a group of security guards are playing poker. The way the scene is shot, however, makes it seem as if the main floor of the library is set in a subterranean space beneath the city, like a half-forgotten cistern full of knowledge. Somerset gently chides the guards for playing cards all night when they have such a treasure trove of culture at their disposal. “We got culture coming out of our ass”, one responds and turns on the stereo. Out pours the gorgeous strains of Bach’s “Air on a G String” as Somerset immerses himself in the dimly-lit rows of books.
Like the scene in Shawshank when Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) risks a lengthy spell in the hole by playing a Mozart record for his fellow inmates, the moment is transportative. Bach’s music provides a note of otherworldly lightness in contrast to the rest of the movie’s soundtrack, which is notable for its grungy heaviness, from the version of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” over the unsettling opening credits to Howard Shore’s spare and gloomy score.
The music floats high above the scene and seems to say: This city may be a shithole and our culture may be going to Hell, but one of the cornerstones of society is beauty and wisdom that endure through the ages. Somerset holds the key to this repository and clings to the notion that art and culture can still help dispel the darkness, just as Andy hopes a few moments of transcendent music can shine a little light into the souls of hundreds of men for whom life has become a cycle of ugliness and drudgery.
The famous ending of Seven is about as harrowing as mainstream Hollywood has dared to get, but we return to this notion of tentative hope for our civilisation as Somerset quotes Ernest Hemingway: “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part.”
So there you have it, our look back at Seven. What was your first experience with the film and how does it compare to other serial killer movies? Let us know your thoughts!
