"Seven" (1995)

I can't tell you whether or not to keep the baby

After disastrous experience with «Alien 3», David Fincher pledged never return to filmmaking and he returned to his beloved music videos. Happily, New Line Cinema mailed him a script of Seven and David Fincher have decided to give filmmaking another shot. This time, he was given more artistic freedom.

1. The city is an evil force

In the mid-1980s, Andrew Kevin Walker went to New York City to find some fame as a screenwriter. He wasn’t too successful, but the Seven’s script perfectly captured the atmosphere of good old filthy NYC of the 1970s-1980s. I think the only director who was able to pull it was Martin Scorsese in Taxi Driver.

Nowadays, NYC is a decent city, where you could walk freely all day long. But in the 1970s-1980s NYC was a disgusting place with spiraling crime, even in the fanciest parts (back then, only the weirdos walked in the Central Park, because it was a perfect place to get mugged). Times Square, now a place for restaurants and tours, was a place with adult theaters and drugs.

Most of the NYC residents are living in tiny flats and the luckiest ones are living near the Metro rails, so they get an extra vibration and no sleep for free. Such lifestyle cancels any mutual feeling and the people are just strolling the streets, ignoring each other and criminal acts. The new inhabitants could nether get used to, neither get mad or neither run away.

The Anonymous City of Andrew Kevin Walker is a quintessential good old filthy NYC. The decadence and indifference is fueled by never-ending rain, bust out buildings and violent crimes.   And now remember, how Travis Bickle wanted «flush it right down the fuckin' toilet».

2. «Wanting people to listen…»

In a city, plagued by violent crime, you need to put some effort in order to get some attention. In one of these Mondays, the police discover a dead obese man, who was literally forced to eat until death. Next day, the police discovers Downtown a corpse of a lawyer with mark «Greed».

Sometime after, police deduce that these are not episodic crimes, this is carefully planned and executed series of crimes. Such crimes don’t produce informers and the police cannot use the usual methods.  The police is left powerless and they only can guess who is these man and could you they get even the slightest hint.

This murderer doesn’t make deliberate mistakes, he is very well versed in medicine, anatomy and classical literature. His every crime is a punishment for the sinner according to the classical texts and in order to understand it, the one should have such level of education, which is mot attributed to your usual police officer. It makes all his «hints» practically useless and the murderer doesn’t leave any admissible evidence.

3. «Ernest Hemingway once wrote…»

William Somerset has to wait exactly one week before the retirement. He lives in the City for a long time and he should already get the thick skin, but the meaningless violence of the City has choked him and he wants to run away to some humane place. Are there any such places left? He might never find out this, because the City have given him the final «gift» - a few brutal murders.

His colleague David Mills is a complete opposite of a quiet intellectual William Somerset. He absorbed the nervous energy of the City and it made him even more impulsive and incapable of long and methodical work. On the other side, his wife is unable to breathe the contaminated City’s air and she quietly fades away.

Only William Somerset is able to understand the motives, but all «hints» are just traps, who are directing to the wrong ends of the murderer’s twisted mental labyrinth. The only way to trace the murderer is to break the law, but it makes the criminal case shaky on technical grounds and the murderer is always a few steps ahead.

4. «I'm setting the example»

Will the City become a better place after murderer’s capture? In order to find an answer, you should watch the film, because you would find out until the last seconds. If David Fincher got the same carte blanche for «Alien 3» it would have been a masterpiece.

Sadly, there are no «ifs» in history, but David Fincher got the classical American «second chance» and used it fully. «Seven» is a great and tense thriller, which keeps you until the last second. Sadly, in his later films the great creator stepped away and the great craftsman took over. That is why, let’s all enjoy his earlier masterpieces.