Se7en

I don't review a lot of classic films. Mainly because I only know so many superlatives and there is little to say about them that isn't straight praise. Indeed, I'm tempted to make a list of films I won't write up simply because you should have seen them by now and formed your own opinion.

But something has always bugged me about Se7en. I feel it falls into that exclusive group as perhaps the definitive serial killer film, but because it is worthy of such high acclaim it's all the more disconcerting that there is something profoundly wrong with it. It is in almost all other respects a fantastic film that nailed down the language of a genre and includes spectacular performances from all concerned. So one can, if so inclined ignore the following rant on the basis that it is a single flaw in an otherwise extremely shiny diamond. It's just me staring at the cracks:

There is no envy killing. The killers whole schtick is to highlight these seven sins, except they manage to miss one. He says that what he has done will be studied for ever, yet it doesn't hold up to actual scrutiny.

John Doe says that it is he who is guilty of envy, that he is envious of a simple life. But the other victims aren't just "kinda" guilty of the sins they have symbolically perpetrated against them, they are symbols of the sins themselves. The gluttony guy isn't just a bit on the pudgy side, he's morbidly obese. What Doe is guilty of is not envy, but a whole bunch of murders. He is the one punishing the sins, he is committing wrath and dies in a way symbolic of that sin and not of envy. Vengeance is laid upon him.

So how about Gwyneth Paltrow? He effectively kills seven people, so she should be one of the sins. The Capital Vices don't number seven plus some blond lady. I guess she's a little envious of people not living in New York, it's not presented as the nicest of places, but again, does that make her a symbol, an embodiment of envy itself? And she's not killed in a way that represents envy either. I suppose you could at a stretch call delivering her head turning it into a material commodity or something of the like, but that's really not as clear or expressive as taking a literal pound of flesh or stabbing some woman in the baby maker.

I guess this could be read as an internal problem, that the error is with Doe himself. He is after all as mad as a bag of hammers and logic should perhaps not be so rigidly applied to his actions. But I just can't help feeling that the completion of what he sees as an artistic statement is an important part of the films conclusion, that his victory is the full realisation and not in getting his way in that particular instance.

Ultimately it doesn't change the film a great deal. It is still great. All it really means is that I and probably only I find it all very frustrating because it is ever so slightly cracked.