The film had one of the most exciting chase scenes that I've ever seen, when the detectives go to John Doe's apartment and he sees them as he comes up the stairs. I was very engaged and on the edge of my seat (literally). It was a great scene.
The most intellectually stimulating scene is when John Doe leads the detectives to the site of the last bodies. In this scene, the detectives and the audience really get to see the thought process of the sadistic killer. His reason for killing these people is all in how he views them:
Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? An obese man... a disgusting man who could barely stand up; a man who if you saw him on the street, you'd point him out to your friends so that they could join you in mocking him; a man, who if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn't be able to finish your meal. After him, I picked the lawyer and I know you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This is a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath that he could muster to keeping murderers and rapists on the streets! A woman...so ugly on the inside she couldn't bear to go on living if she couldn't be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer, a drug dealing pederast, actually! And let's not forget the disease-spreading whore! Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night.
John Doe's thought process makes sense for a person trying to live the letter of the law, a person who is trying to be perfect on his own. Yes, people everywhere are guilty of lust, slothfulness, greed, gluttony, and all the other deadly sins. If a person were trying to follow the law of God alone, they would be infuriated by the world around us, with its blatant disregard for any form of law. John Doe is a Christian extremist, a terrorist for the name of Christianity. It is strange to be presented with a religious terrorist that comes from my own faith. Normally, it's easy to excuse and separate (at least, for other people) when it's someone who claims to be Muslim or something different than themselves. But John Doe is on us.
And Doe's problem is that he desired sacrifice, not mercy. He wanted to purify these people, the world of its dirtiness. But God doesn't work that way. When Jesus came, he did not kill those who were committing terrible crimes or life-altering sins--he ate with them, he talked to them, he chose to be with them when everyone else drew boundaries and didn't dare cross them. Jesus saw the human inside the body, he looked deep enough to know that there was a reason why they were doing these things. He never wrote people off as "prostitutes," or "thieves," or anything else. He saw them as people.
That is where John Doe failed to be like Christ. He took his anger at humanity and threw it back in the form of grotesque torture and violence, all the while thinking he was doing the work of God. But he was terribly mistaken. Instead of killing the obese man, he could have looked closer (American Beauty shoutout) to see why the man was eating his life away. Was he hurting? Was he lonely? All actions have stimuli. John Doe wasn't willing to find them.
I wondered why people wanted to see "Seven." It operates on the same principles that the Saw series does: a man sees people abusing their lives and makes them pay for it, and audiences get to watch/enjoy the punishments he inflicts. Why is it that we love to watch people getting tortured? Why do we love to see violence of outlandish nature? Is it the shock value, the nature of the act is so foreign that our curiosity and conscience is piqued?
David Fincher is no stranger to violence, and I can't blame him--shooting violence is fun. I recently shot a short film with the guys in my hall, and in one scene, a guy is strangled to death. The victim and assailant go around the room, fighting one another, knocking over a lamp and other things. And as I watched it, I was impressed by the realness of it. And when I show it to people, they are impressed for the same reason. It makes the film seem better when we destroy things. Maybe that's what David Fincher thinks to, and the things he destroys are people.
And Doe's problem is that he desired sacrifice, not mercy. He wanted to purify these people, the world of its dirtiness. But God doesn't work that way. When Jesus came, he did not kill those who were committing terrible crimes or life-altering sins--he ate with them, he talked to them, he chose to be with them when everyone else drew boundaries and didn't dare cross them. Jesus saw the human inside the body, he looked deep enough to know that there was a reason why they were doing these things. He never wrote people off as "prostitutes," or "thieves," or anything else. He saw them as people.
That is where John Doe failed to be like Christ. He took his anger at humanity and threw it back in the form of grotesque torture and violence, all the while thinking he was doing the work of God. But he was terribly mistaken. Instead of killing the obese man, he could have looked closer (American Beauty shoutout) to see why the man was eating his life away. Was he hurting? Was he lonely? All actions have stimuli. John Doe wasn't willing to find them.
I wondered why people wanted to see "Seven." It operates on the same principles that the Saw series does: a man sees people abusing their lives and makes them pay for it, and audiences get to watch/enjoy the punishments he inflicts. Why is it that we love to watch people getting tortured? Why do we love to see violence of outlandish nature? Is it the shock value, the nature of the act is so foreign that our curiosity and conscience is piqued?
David Fincher is no stranger to violence, and I can't blame him--shooting violence is fun. I recently shot a short film with the guys in my hall, and in one scene, a guy is strangled to death. The victim and assailant go around the room, fighting one another, knocking over a lamp and other things. And as I watched it, I was impressed by the realness of it. And when I show it to people, they are impressed for the same reason. It makes the film seem better when we destroy things. Maybe that's what David Fincher thinks to, and the things he destroys are people.
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