Movie Review: Seven aka Se7en (1995)
Link to Letterboxd review, which is fully quoted below. 5 stars, seen multiple, multiple times.
Many spoilers abound.
“We are not what was intended.”
—John Doe’s diary
Not noticed before:
Excerpt from his diary: someone tapped on his shoulder on the subway and wanted to talk to him. John Doe was overwhelmed by their “banality”, and, without really noticing he had done it, according to him, vomited all over them. He said he couldn’t stop laughing about it.
Parallel reference in the car talking to Somerset and Mills:
“Wanting people to listen, you can’t just tap them on the shoulder any more. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you’ll notice you have their strict attention.”
Also: the van is the first time in his entire career that Somerset fired his gun.
And the showdown is the first and only time Somerset calls Mills “David”.
And Tracy is not sweet: she is invasive. Pay attention to how Somerset asks her repeatedly why she is calling him. Don’t pay attention to the time that goes by, and she is a sweet wife, trying to adjust to a new, grinding and scary city, and befriend her husband’s new partner. But pay attention to the timeline, as I just did for the first time, and she is really forcing her way intimately into a deep introvert/recluse’s life within two days of knowing him at all. That’s disturbing. If I met you one night on a generally surface level, and the next day you were crying into my phone and my coffee about the most intimate details of your life, telling me things your husband didn’t know, I would be blocking your number and running for the hills. And I am not quite as reserved and wounded as Somerset, though I am much like him. I’ve had someone do that to me—I just met you but we’re best friends and I am going to crawl inside your skin now okkkayyy—and it is seriously disturbing. It’s not sweet and fragile.
This movie gets more intelligent and goes deeper every time I watch it.
“Hell, love costs. It takes effort and work.”
—William Somerset
“Nothing wrong with a man enjoying his work.”
—John Doe
“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”
—John Milton, Paradise Lost
Headcanon: the city of The Crow and the city of Seven are the same crime-ridden, rain-soaked hateful city.
“It can’t rain all the time.”
—The Crow, James O’Barr
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