MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. SCROLL DOWN FOR DVD DETAILS.
Seven is a film about sacrifices, those in the name of both societal protest and martyrdom. It basically parallels two characters, a quiet, ruminative policeman who's anxiously awaiting retirement (when we meet him, he's only got a week left on the job) and a serial killer fuelled in his handiwork by a disgust for humanity, and the story closes on each of them making the ultimate oblation: John Doe, the murderer, dies in a strategically planned suicide, while Detective Somerset tells his superior on what was to be his last day of employment, "I'll be around." In so doing, he condemns himself to more years of confronting the worst humanity has to offer in a city on the brink of apocalypse.
A character cuts into the dance between Somerset and Doe, Detective David Mills. He's the opposite of Somerset: white, for starters, and young and hyper and vulgar. He doesn't think he's wet behind the ears, but, despite five years working homicide in some happier town, he hasn't outgrown TV cop lingo and the de rigueur live-wire attitude. (During an autopsy that points in all directions to murder, Mills announces to Somerset and the coroner, "Gentlemen, it looks like we've got ourselves a homicide." Somerset peers at him in utter disbelief.)
Mills is a genre stereotype, and for a while we fear the worst for Brad Pitt, who plays him: the part is such a walking cliché that any portrayal of it is bound to look hackneyed. Indeed, with minor alterations, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker could've transformed Seven into a Lethal Weapon sequel, but eventually, the film subverts the conventions (the racially and ideologically mixed "buddies," the resourceful bogeyman, impending retirement--or, as Chief Wiggum so aptly put it on a recent episode of "The Simpsons", "retirony"--and so on) it has painstakingly re-established for us. Just when we're anticipating the scene in which the chief suspends our heroes for colouring outside the lines, he encourages them to stay on board the Doe case. The partnership of Mills and Somerset, too, takes honestly tentative turns.
Remarkably, none of the reversals of expectations are a cheat, although, as Richard Dyer, author of a BFI pocketbook devoted to deconstructing the film, notes in one of four new commentaries on New Line's Platinum Series DVD re-release of Seven, Gwyneth Paltrow's role as Tracy, Mills' wife, is little more than a device, a shortcut to sympathy. How you feel about Tracy will probably depend on your affection for Paltrow--I love the moment in which she confesses her secret pregnancy to Somerset over a greasy spoon breakfast, yet its programmatic nature causes me to squirm when I see it now; I appreciate it only for the chemistry between Paltrow and Freeman, and her split-second breakdown at his tenet that she "spoil that kid" seems wonderfully spontaneous.
At any rate, Seven averts The Usual Suspects-style machinations, in vogue then and now, wherein the end of the piece invalidates the whole. In other words, we're not talking about coldly calculated "twists." (Oddly enough, when Kevin Spacey shows up at a police station in either movie he holds the key to everything that's been puzzled over beforehand.) Director David Fincher has specialized in careful rug-pulling since his commercial beginnings. (At this point, I believe I've actually seen everything of his that's ever been publicly shown. In film school, a fellow student grabbed my arm excitedly and dragged me into an editing suite, whereupon she cued up Fincher's demo reel--spots for Nike, The American Cancer Society, and others. A dub had somehow wound up in the "tapes for recycle" section of York U.'s equipment cage.)
Fincher is responsible for a morbid, Rollerball-inspired Coca-Cola ad, of all things. He had the audacity to kill off Madonna in the video "Bad Girl" (she was swept up to heaven by Christopher Walken!), the chutzpah to bury a franchise with the veritable crucifixion of its recurring heroine in Alien3, and his Seven follow-ups The Game and Fight Club present few opportunities for complacency. If I'm less fond of his last two features than his first two (Alien3's rotten reputation is simply undeserved), it's because they are more fashionably ironic and less humane. I think Seven is on to something that Fight Club isn't--it's a serious contemplation on the new apathy as opposed to social reject fantasy. And Seven sacrifices--there's that word again--a lot of the goodwill audiences seeking "entertainment" bring to it in the name of its central theme, that sin is the tie that binds us all.
I've heard Seven called everything from "cool" to "sickening" to, incredulously, "hilarious" (though Pitt does have some sensational comic lines, the most famous of which is probably his butchery of the "Marquis de Sade"). How about lovely? Seven--and Fincher's--imitators have thus far been content to artfully light and pose the forensically terrifying without really challenging us to see the art within the lifelessness itself. We must appreciate its beauty in order to stay transfixed on the screen despite our fright or nausea. Sickness needs a defendable context, otherwise it's just for the gore fiends, and Fincher provides one of compelling procedural study here.
The movie allows us to get under its skin, to poke and prod as Mills and Somerset (Morgan Freeman, in a gracious, masterful performance) do, and to evaluate Doe's motives without being asked to accept or dismiss them. (Truth be told, we wind up doing a bit of both.) When I was in gradeschool, there hung a poster in my history classroom of decomposing World War II soldiers lined up for survey on a battlefield, and its caption read, "A terrible beauty." I hadn't associated the fascinating dread I felt from staring at that advertisement (for a Remembrance Day exhibit) with any other photograph until I saw the moving pictures of Seven. Its makers took great leaps of faith in order to give us not what we wanted, but what we--and the genre--needed: the confrontation of our daily ethical dilemma. "The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for," Somerset tells us in haunting voice-over. "I believe in the second part." Me, too.
DVD DETAILS
Fortunately, Seven was something of a dark horse triumph at the box office in 1995, and its status as a video hit was pretty much assured the second they cast Pitt. It's one of the biggest success stories in New Line's history (and it probably instilled them with the courage to twice gamble on writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson), so the studio has repented for a pretty lousy, movie-only edition they released on DVD back when the format was warming up with this aforementioned 2-disc Platinum Series set, a package I can't praise higher--and I own the much-heralded Criterion LaserDisc box released a few years back. Disc One contains a remastered, anamorphic, 2.40:1 transfer derived from the original negative; it's not the silver retention print contained on Criterion's platters, but it has been corrected according to Fincher's specifications. Blacks are gorgeous and well-delineated, not inky, and colours are suitably desaturated. The telecine operators have brilliantly approximated Darius Khondji's goal for his cinematography to resemble "a French perfume commercial".
The new DVD certainly does the LD one better by adding "EX" info to its Dolby Digital audio as well as a DTS ES track. The extra call letters indicate rear channel info that requires additional decoders and surround speakers. With my current equipment I'm only able to evaluate the 5.1 Dolby Digital track, and it's nonetheless terrific, a profoundly intricate listening experience. Dialogue is purposely muddied by ambient noise at times: Fincher wanted the film gritty, bereft of sheen, in every facet. The soundfield truly spans 360 degrees, with the LFE channel really kicking in for Trent Reznor's "Closer" remix over the title sequence and during the loud sex-club investigation, which, incidentally, seemingly broadens the acoustics of your home theatre!
There are a quartet of commentary tracks on Disc One and, in terms of scope alone, they have the Criterion version beat. Luckily, quantity and quality are the names of the game.
Track One-The Stars: David Fincher, Brad Pitt, and Morgan Freeman. Freeman's wry observations are spliced in separately, while Fincher and Pitt get each other giggling quite a bit between extraneous but entertaining anecdotes. (FYI, this is Pitt's third commentary this year!) What a pleasure it was to hear Freeman remark on his "Electric Company" days (whenever approached by an adult claiming he taught him or her how to read, Freeman responds, "Yeah, but did I teach you how to understand what you were reading?"), and it's interesting to learn of the occasions when Pitt is concealing a broken wrist from the camera.
Track Two-The Story: Dyer, Fincher, Walker, editor Richard Francis-Bruce, New Line co-head Michael De Luca. In my opinion, the piece de resistance of this collection. A compilation of monologues, the best words come from Fincher (recounting, in greater detail, some of what he discussed with Pitt, such as the disastrous test-screening) and Dyer. The veddy British Dyer's participation is a testament to the serious-mindedness of this disc, for he critiques Seven mercilessly. (He's passionate about it all the same.) Walker recounts his days at Tower Records, De Luca explains, persuasively, the need for an epilogue that originally wasn't there (without it, we have Chinatown redux, total hopelessness), and Francis-Bruce expresses his gratitude for being part of the team. He singles out some of the more impossibly cut exchanges.
Track Three-The Picture: Dyer, Khondji, Francis-Bruce, production designer Arthur Max. An in-depth exploration of the poetically grungy visuals. Be patient with francophone Khondji, for beneath the thick accent he's providing instruction to budding directors of photography everywhere.
Track Four-The Sound: Dyer, Fincher, composer Howard Shore, sound designer Ren Klyce. Much of this track is isolated music and effects in 5.1, perfect for your next Halloween bash. Shore also scored The Silence of the Lambs and Cronenberg's pictures from The Fly on. His comments are the most engaging, and few and far between.
Disc One also offers script-to-screen DVD-ROM access; read-along as you watch the film and you'll be tickled by the subtle changes in dialogue.
DISC TWO:
Rough and final multi-angle-enabled comparisons (in stereo, Dolby Surround, DD EX, or DD ES--anyone hoping to bootleg Reznor's cut has a wealth of choices) of the title sequence with optional commentary from engineers Brant Biles and Robert Margouleff or Klyce.
A deleted scenes section offers mostly extensions of existing scenes with optional Fincher commentary. The original "house" prologue is a curiosity (it's difficult to imagine it as the opening), as is the discarded test-screening finish and a storyboarded version of a totally different ending.
Arthur Max takes us on a nine-minute tour of the production design. Also included are animated galleries of crime scene photos, production stills, and photos of John Doe's apartment with commentary by their photographers (Melodie McDaniel or Peter Sorel). Fincher chimes in yet again over a week-by-week presentation of Polaroids containing the gradually decaying Victor, the "sloth" victim. This is where the Criterion set is preferable, as there make-up maestro Rob Bottin described his contribution to the corpse effects in extremely funny detail. Lastly, as far as this stuff is concerned, a team of designers comment on Doe's lovingly crafted notebooks. (Creepy, creepy reading.)
"Mastering for Home Theater" really cooks. Four continuously running chapters explore, with various commentaries, the preparation of Seven for this DVD. In the penultimate, colourist Stephen Nakamura tweaks the original negative image before our very eyes; it's a peek behind the green curtain of digital magic I won't soon forget. The final, "telecine gallery" presents multi-angle, multi-audio comparisons of the original DVD master and this new one, and the differences are striking. The previous 5.1 mix is quite harsh and front-focused, and the image evidently used to appear washed-out instead of delicately toned-down.
Phew. My longest review of the year. In the words of David Mills, "Let's finish it": an electronic press kit from 1995 and the theatrical trailer (2.35:1 anamorphic, DD 5.1) carry this baby off into the Somerset. I'll be holding on to my Criterion--if only because of Bottin and a selection of discarded poster art--but I'll be shelving this DVD right next to it. It stacks up.
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