Essay 2 David Fincher’s Seven (1995)
In today's mainstream film genre, crime thriller is undoubtedly a hot one. The complexity
of the story, its mind-blowing clues, and its unexpected twists keep viewers hooked. Even after
watching the movie, I often have a heated discussion with my friends about the plot of the
movie, such as who is the murderer? As a result, the crime thriller has become a popular genre,
not simply as a form of entertainment, but as a way for the audience to think along with the
development of the story. The film I'm going to talk about today is one that in my opinion
pioneered the crime thriller genre and has become a benchmark in the field. The film is David
Fincher's Seven. Since its release in 1995, we can easily see the shadow of Seven in countless
similar films around the world. As a masterpiece of crime thriller films, director David Fincher
combines criminal psychology with social contradictions to form a highly tense plot and
worthy of in-depth discussion of social significance. In this article, I will focus on the analysis
of Western Christianity, Catholicism and other religious cultural background in the film Seven,
as well as what elements the director used to show it.
As the second film directed by David Fincher, the film follows the serial murder cases
made by criminal John Doe (Kevin Spacey) as a clue, and tells the story of the Seven Deadly
Sins series of murders from the perspective of police officers Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and
Mills (Brad Pitt). If we ignore the religious meaning of the film and start from the perspective
of the plot, the film is actually director David Fincher's indictment of the indifferent and chaotic
society. A policeman finally becomes the executor of the murderer's plan. Is this a satire of
society and life, an irresistible rejection of the seven tenets of God in the vast world, or a symbol
of the chaotic life order in this world where so many sins should be punished? The director
presents human weakness to the world through a film exhibition, with a strong taste of blood,
spread out a nearly pathological picture, let the audience see the other side of the coin. Like
The Hemingway quote that Samoset quotes at the end of the film, "The world is a fine place
and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part "(Seven, 1995).
As I mentioned previously, the genre of the movie Seven can easily be classified as crime
thriller movie, also called psycho thriller, which crime is represented as an outward
manifestation of the internal workings of the pathological individual psyche. According to
Philip Simpson (2010), he pointed out that "the psycho thriller is more character study than it
is a plot-driven narrative." Which means the characters must confront a blend of psychological
and physical danger, with the physical danger usually an external manifestation or result of a
psychological imbalance. Furthermore, another unique characteristic of crime thriller is "The"
good "and" evil "characters share many of the same traits and commit many of the same violent
and/or venal acts, though for differing reasons "(Simpson, 2010). At the end of the movie,
Detective Mills pulls the trigger on John Doe and tries him for the crime of jealousy. The
director successfully shaped them into one of the Seven Deadly Sins of criminals, trying to
make people understand that all people are guilty, human evil is eternal truth.
First of all, I would like to talks about the religion culture within the movie Seven. As the
title suggests, the plot revolves around the Seven Deadly Sins. The religious roots of the Seven
Deadly Sins were first defined by the ancient Greek Christian ascetic Evagrius Ponticus as
eight evils that harm one's spirituality. By the late 6th century, Pope Gregory I had reduced
those eight Sins to seven, lumping vanity together with arrogance; Melancholy is joined with
idleness, and joined with envy. Finally, in the 13th century, Priest St. Thomas Aquinas came
up with what are now the Seven Deadly Sins, according to Catholic doctrine: pride, greed, lust,
envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2022). These seven Sins appear
repeatedly in various religious stories and paintings, such as Dante's Divine Comedy, the
Christian Bible, and John Milton's Paradise Lost.
In the film, the sense of ritual is so strong that it is impossible to talk about the film without
religion, because religion itself is part of the film. The killer, John Doe, murders in accordance
with the Seven Deadly Sins in the film, making him both a preacher and a perpetrator of
original sin (the original sin of jealousy). This act was regarded by him as a kind of necessity,
a kind of faith, and then it was called a ritual. It seems to me that this is similar to the existence
of Jesus in Christianity. Jesus himself did not have original sin. The reason he went to suffer
was to suffer for the sake of all those who had suffered original sin. So he was both a preacher
and a sinner. Therefore, at the end of the film, John Doe repeatedly points out that he is
practicing the punishment of original sin for God. His ideas were infused with a strong
Christian idea of "atonement", which saved apathy by drawing attention to the whole thing in
a very violent and bloody way. As he said, "Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What
I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed... forever "(Seven, 1995).
Dante's Divine Comedy also embodies the dual identity of preacher and original sin taker. In
Canto XIX of the Fourth Cliff in Purgatorio, Dante falls asleep before the capital sin of sloth,
and he confides his original sin of sloth, but this does not prevent him from becoming a
preacher (Alighieri, 2009).
If we say that the previous presentation of religion is the director through the plot itself,
put on the surface. Then the role of the number seven in the film is a metaphor for the Christian
doctrine deliberately designed by David Fincher. In Christianity, many stories are related to
the number seven, which makes the number full of mystery. In the Bible, the Book of Genesis
says seven days; God created Adam in seven days, then created Eve from Adam's seventh rib,
and so on. Apparently, the number has been used several times in the movie. In the film, there
are seven cases, corresponding to the murderer's so-called "seven punishments"; Seven days of
rain and rain; The story ends on the seventh day; The time was set by the killer at 7:00 p.m. It
can be said that the number seven is everywhere, it seems to imply the cycle of fate, crime and
punishment, from the beginning doomed to an inescapable end. In J.E. Cirlot's A Dictionary of
Symbols, the author says that the number 7 is a symbol of "perfect order, a complete period of
cycle ". Thus, these seven murders representing the Seven Deadly Sins can be understood as
the establishment of a new order, a kind of cleansing of social vices.
As I mentioned in the first paragraph, the Seven pervades much of the Christian, Catholic
intellectual metaphor and cultural context. The film explores the influence and judgment of
religious thoughts on human behavior through symbols and plots. The killer was a fanatical
believer who believed he had the right, in place of God, to punish those who committed the
Seven Deadly Sins. However, the director David Fincher only borrowed the evil of original sin
and the holiness of the preacher to criticize the real world and the satire of human nature. He
is just talking about a phenomenon, about the gradual loss of human beings under the
secularized society. Perhaps, I think what David Fincher wants us to think about is whether we
have the courage to face life when we know the ugliness and absurdity of the world. What kind
of attitude and way should we use to treat life?
References
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Translated by H. F. Cary, Wordsworth Editions, 2009.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "seven deadly sins". Encyclopedia Britannica, 3
Nov. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/seven-deadly-sins. Accessed 27 November
2022.
Cirlot, Juan Eduardo, et al. A Dictionary of Symbols. Routledge, 2015.
Fincher, David, et al. SE7EN. USA, 1995.
Simpson, Philip. “Noir and the Psycho Thriller.” A Companion to Crime Fiction, 2010, pp.
187–197., https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444317916.ch14.