20 years of 'Seven': the 127 minutes that dynamited our innocence
It was like growing up in the two hours and seven minutes that the movie lasts. For the generation now in their thirties, it caught them in their teens. Others a little older. The result was the same: a shock. The murky images, the nihilistic message, the gloomy vision of life, the blood, the possibility that there was someone capable of killing that way, the madness. After seeing it, the life of these spectators was no longer the same, with one of the messages of the film hitting the innocent brains: "He who is free from sin, cast the first stone." Twenty years have passed and Seven (1995, directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey and Gwyneth Paltrow) has kept its power of seduction intact. Its viewing continues to shrink the viewer's soul and its influence continues to this day in hits such as the True Detective series.
After the success of The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Hollywood was so stunned by the ferocity of its approach that it took four years to produce another psychothriller. Seven was a chase in conventional theory shaken by an atmosphere and characters so gloomy and taciturn, so stripped of humanity or hope that it seemed like a post-9/11 movie (movement whose greatest exponent would be The Dark Knight), if it weren't for Seven's release in 1995, the same year as Babe, the Brave Pig and Apollo 13. For that very reason, this sinister film was a rarity in the midst of the endearing '90s. An extravagance from which everyone was awed, even those of us who were too young people and our older brothers had to tell us about it. A phenomenon that led it to be the seventh (hehe) highest grossing film of the year.
20 years later, the collective imagination continues to remember it as a work that wildly portrays (or rather predicts) the crisis of values at the turn of the century in the middle of the most peaceful decade in the history of cinema. A visionary film that also plays with weapons borrowed from other genres to establish a new canon in detective film and shake the rules of Hollywood. The public and the industry would never be the same again.
Brad Pitt had guts
The greatest male sex symbol of the 90s enjoyed a neat and almost ethereal image that celebrated the triumph of the American dream over cereal and pancakes for breakfast. His role as a serial killer in Kalifornia (Dominic Sena, 1993) was buried with a late, minority release. Seven locked America's pretty boy (32 years old when he shot it) in a perverse hell with no possible escape. The interpretation of detective David Mills was his first dramatic challenge in a film without concessions for his public image for which he did earn like a star (7 million dollars, 6.27 million €). Pitt did not limit himself to acting: thanks to his insistence the film kept its end, against the studio that was horrified by such a depressing outcome for the greatest adolescent idol of the moment. But how memorable.
Brad Pitt was still constrained by his physique: people who are so beautiful are constantly worried about staying that way, like that friend who always comes out with the same face on Instagram. That's why his crappy-type shell is somewhat plastic (saying “fuck” 74 times is not enough), after which he returned to his ads for two-hour shampoo (Seven Years in Tibet, 1997; Do you know Joe Black? 1998). But the germ of stubbornness struggled to return precisely when Seven director David Fincher corrupted its beauty in Fight Club (1999), and Pitt's career was never complacent again.
We finally learned the deadly sins
All those hours of catechesis memorizing commandments, prayers and sins were not as effective as the 127 minutes that Seven lasts. Catholicism has always tended to use gory imagery to frighten us, but not to teach. Far from repeating the technique 7 times, each new crime proposes a new bizarre twist, briefly showing us the carnage and making us feel guilty for wishing the shots would last a couple of seconds longer. As sordid as it may be, Andrew Kevin Walker's (Sleepy Hollow, Murder on 8mm) script finally manages to convey the patronizing message (imitated in Saw -James Wan, 2004-) that the killer pursues with his plan.
A newly married police officer and another about to retire guarantee trouble
The structure of the "buddy movies" calls for one to be introverted and the other to look like something out of The Comedy Club. They are generally of different races and, if they are separated by more than 20 years, a serial killer is coming. Detectives Mills (Brad Pitt) and Somerset (Morgan Freeman) do not become friends through endearing scenes over scrambled eggs for breakfast, they are still radically different in no time, but they learn to work together on their common goal of cleaning the world of moral putrefaction. . In fact, the viewer does not realize how much they are appreciated until the last scene. That sometimes happens in life too. That is a well written script.
'Seven' locked Brad Pitt, America's pretty boy, in a perverse hell with no possible escape. It was his first dramatic challenge in a film without concessions to his public image for which he did earn as a star
The future of cinema was in the hands of the MTV generation....
The 90s marked the end of the film directors who had been forged by fiddling with Cinexín and Super-8 cameras. It was the time to get wrapped up in the world of advertising and video clips and burst into Hollywood like an elephant in a china shop: with a lot of nerve, a frenzied montage of short shots, extreme color in the photography and constant references to pop culture (remember phrases like: "Jodie Foster made me do it", "You are the movie of the week, you are at most a T-shirt").
Nobody wanted classics that transcended generations, because the new audience lived only in the present, in the next ad. Viewers had grown up with hundreds of stimuli bombarding them at once and could take in bizarre script twists, euphoric dialogues, and even interspersed shots (of a giant penis, in the case of Fight Club, or Paltrow's face, at the end of Seven).
Director David Fincher was responsible for the two video clips that best encapsulate the sensuality of the early 90s: Madonna's Vogue (androgyny, fans and cone bras), and George Michael's Freedom (supermodels, fridges open at midnight and strawberries with cream). She brought her exultant narrative pulse to worries about how it is easier to be a disgusting human being than not to be while the rest of the MTV generation (Spike Jonze, Spike Lee or Michael Bay) followed different but equally visually overwhelming paths.
There's something satisfying about watching Gwyneth Paltrow suffer
In Sex and the City a character claimed that "nowadays everyone goes to the psychoanalyst, even Gwyneth Paltrow." "What's your problem?", Answered Carrie Bradshaw, "does she like herself too much?" Paltrow makes it clear that she believes she is better than everyone else in anything she does, from judging Iron-Man to naming her sons Apple and Moses. This was her first major movie, in which we still called her "Brad Pitt's girlfriend," and even though we didn't know who she was we were already bored by her middle-class problems. 20 years later scientist Timothy Caulfield was forced to write the book Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? to disprove the healthy living tips Gwyneth recommends, from eating just lemonade to steaming your vagina. Someone had to stop this madness.
Morgan Freeman never judges you
In the dozens of films that Freeman appears in, he always exploits that innate ability to make everything he says sound like the absolute truth. Who could contradict Morgan Freeman? He has done nothing wrong in his 30-year career. At the antipodes of Detective Mills' verbal diarrhea, William Somerset, his character, does not give his opinion on anything other than the investigation. It's not that he doesn't have opinions, but he's learned not to share them if no one asks him before. The destruction of both detectives seems inevitable, leaving a Somerset as a warrior in spite of himself (like Buffy, Batman or Elsa from Frozen), that concept that is so fashionable 20 years later everywhere.
His influence splashes on 'True Detective'
Hollywood and its audience have a symbiotic relationship: when something new triumphs, the public wants more of the same, and Hollywood is delighted that they don't have to come up with new ideas. Since Psycho (1960), serial killers work in the cinema by mere anticipation. The viewer knows that there will be more murders, and feels a disgusting curiosity to discover when and especially how they will happen. Narrating the devastating and obsessive consequences that the crimes will have on the investigating police officer (and the twisted relationship of admiration and need he establishes with the murderer) is a resource that The Silence of the Lambs and Seven took advantage of first and best. A subgenre that is only sometimes captivating, but always entertaining, which would later come The Bone Collector, Fallen (both starring Denzel Washington, who rejected Seven for being too gloomy), Zodiac, The Hour of the Spider, Copycat. Deadly copy (yes it is), Identity or True Detective.
None has muddied the commotion that Seven caused 20 years later: it remains one of the most harrowing portraits of the human race ever made by cinema.
