Classic 90s Movie: “Se7en”
May is Classic 90s Movie month. Today’s guest post comes from David Germinario.
Movie Title: Se7en
Year: 1995
Writer: Andrew Kevin Walker
Lead Actors: Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Gwyneth Paltrow
Director: David Fincher
IMDB Plot Summary: Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his modus operandi.
Why This is a Classic 90s Movie: This movie captured the melancholy feelings that overcame us by 1995… dark, cynical, hopeless. The never ending rainstorm in a nameless city rotting from the inside, as well as the population’s increasing apathy towards just about everything, mirrors the dingy, nihilistic grunge movement that replaced the bombastic, neon and cocaine-fueled 80s with flannel, angst, and heroin chic.
Se7en deftly bends genre. It’s been called a horror, a procedural, a crime thriller, and a twisted take on the buddy cop movie. But it’s also unbelievably high-concept: two polar opposite cops track down a killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his calling card.
The script even makes interesting the most tired trope of all, the tired, world weary cop a week before retirement, and the wide-eyed, brash, overly optimistic rookie who thinks he can clean up the means streets with some gumption and a couple of one-liners. The key is that they go beyond the stereotypes, exploring what makes each character tick, so that the final moments are all the more gut-wrenching.
The machinations of the mysterious John Doe tick with clockwork precision, even though the clock itself is horrifying, disgusting. When Doe is toying with Mills and Somerset, he’s toying with us, and the viewer feels it in their stomach. It doesn’t hurt that it ends on one the of the biggest, sickest, most painful gut-punches in cinematic history. The only the thing that keeps you from throwing up is that you can help but marvel at its brilliance. There’s a reason people still scream, “What’s in the box???” to denote something horrible about to happen.
My Favorite Moment: While most would say the killer ending, my favorite scene is Somerset in the library. It’s amazing character work, Somerset studies texts he. and, at the moment, only he, believes are germane to the case: Dante’s Divine Comedy, Chaucher’s Canterbury Tales, and the like. Somerset sits in a massive, beautiful library as Johann Sebastian Bach plays in the background. It’s intercut with Mills, huddled on his couch, drinking PBR, and combing through gruesome crime scene photos and reports, something more akin to “normal” police work. Mills is frazzled, frustrated, looking for something but not knowing what. Somerset, on the other hand, is calm, cool, collected, peaceful.
Favorite Dialogue:
William Somerset: [Reading from one of John Doe’s journals] On the subway today, a man came up to me to start a conversation. He made small talk, a lonely man talking about the weather and other things. I tried to be pleasant and accommodating, but my head hurt from his banality. I almost didn’t notice it had happened, but I suddenly threw up all over him. He was not pleased, and I couldn’t stop laughing.
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William Somerset: This guy’s methodical, exacting, and worst of all, patient.
David Mills: He’s a nut-bag! Just because the fucker’s got a library card doesn’t make him Yoda.
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David Mills: You’re no messiah. You’re a movie of the week. You’re a fucking t-shirt, at best.
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William Somerset: Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.” I agree with the second part.
Key Things to Look For:
-The opening title sequence, a disturbing tapestry of marble notebooks and razor-bladed fingers, at first just seems like some creepy stuff to set the tone, but as the story unfolds it’s clear that it’s a montage of John Doe getting ready to begin his masterpiece.
-Morgan Freeman’s Somerset is so clearly defined in the first two scenes. He meticulously lays out his tools of the trade, a metronome marking the cadence, as he gets ready to go to work for one of the last times. And then a fellow detective giving him a not so happy send-off when he has to gall to ask if the child was there when the mother blew the father away.
-As much as this film is a snapshot of the darker outlook of the mid-90s, if feels ahead of it’s time in so many ways. The detectives make use of an off-the-books FBI practice of monitoring library reading habits, this was a full seven years before that become a contentious item in the post 9/11 Patriot Act. Not to mention talk of how the mile-a-minute news cycle keeps people from being truly horrified by an event for any significant amount of time before forgetting about it and moving on. This was pre-mainstream internet and CNN still was only a few years old.
-The first thing we see when the movie ends is Kevin Spacey’s name. That’s because to keep the surprise of who John Doe was, Spacey was in no marketing materials or trailers, and did no press for the movie (something he loved about the role). This was a tightrope act in 1995, today it would be impossible.
-Andrew Kevin Walker wrote this script while he was working at a Tower Records (remember those?). David Fincher thought his career was over after Alien³ proved to be a disaster, until he was reinvigorated after reading Walker’s script. Brad Pitt threatened to not do the movie if the now-famous was changed to something lighter. This movie is proof-positive that all you need to do is write an amazing script and find people who will rally behind it.
Thanks, David! To show our gratitude for your guest post, here’s a dash of creative juju for you. Whoosh!
Twitter: @DCGerminario
We already have a set of 80s Movies. This month we cover 90s movies. So thanks to all of you for your participation in this project, creating a resource for writers, movies they should watch to help learn the craft of screenwriting!
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