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"This story will not have a happy ending," says the disillusioned Somerset (a splendid Morgan Freeman, in the role of a police lieutenant nearing retirement) to his fiery colleague Mills (Brad Pitt) about the chain of murders they are investigating. And so it will be.
With "Seven," director David Fincher inserts himself with great visual talent into the serial killer genre, demonstrating an unusual pessimism in contemporary American cinema. Thanks to the extraordinary cinematography of Darius Khondji, who accentuates the blacks through special chemical processes, Fincher creates an often very gloomy atmosphere. The interiors are dimly lit, the exteriors show us a nameless city drowned in waste and beaten by incessant rain: a nightmare landscape that seems pulled from a James Ellroy novel. But Fincher and screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker avoid getting trapped in the clichés of the genre. The murders occur off-screen; the viewer is shown the crime scenes, the mutilated bodies, never the execution methods: the horror is inevitable, we can only endure its consequences.
And if the duo of protagonists (the old cop and the young one, the life mentor and the student) harks back to Hollywood tradition, the character development holds some surprises. Furthermore, in an era of thrillers focused on the latest technological advances, in "Seven" the investigations take place in the library, among dusty medieval tomes. It is from the texts of Dante and Chaucer that the hallucinatory project of one of the most terrifying serial killers to appear on screen emerges: a man without a name and without fingerprints, who has planned his crimes for years, filling thousands of pages of his diaries with delirious sermons, as shown in the opening title sequence. He calls himself John Doe (in the USA, this name is synonymous with an everyman, the equivalent of our "Mister Rossi"), like the hero of an old Frank Capra film, a symbol of an innocent and pure America, now gone forever. John Doe’s mission becomes clear only in the final sequence, when the action shifts to a vast desert expanse. It is precisely the chilling conclusion that gives the film a moral sense that forces the viewer to take a stand and ask many questions even after the credits roll: it is also for this reason that "Seven" is one of the great thrillers of the '90s.
"Ernest Hemingway once wrote: 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."
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Other reviews
By Pure Francis
It is one of the films that most piqued my imagination as a teenager, both for the underlying theme (the 7 deadly sins) and for the sad epilogue of the story.
The sensation of getting used to horrors ... I believe is absolutely terrifying for our human nature.
By Rax
Seven is a pessimistic reflection (unfortunately prophetic) on this world 'where people now cultivate apathy as if it were a virtue, and where love is missing because it requires effort and dedication.'
The film teaches not to be naive – 'because we can’t afford to be' – but also to not succumb to selfishness in the face of current world selfishness.
