THE WORLD VIEW OF 'SE7EN'

The film Se7en came out in 1995.  Seeing it shortly after its release, I found myself puzzled as to where it was coming from.  From the atheist perspective I had at the time, it seemed to be dealing with Catholic themes – Dante, Aquinas, deadly sins and cardinal virtues – without  itself having a Catholic perspective towards them. 

     Revisiting it in 2012, now from a Christian perspective, I think I was right in that initial assessment.  That is to say, I think there is a religious viewpoint; but one that is neither Catholic in particular, nor Christian in general.  This review will try to illustrate what I mean. 

Before that, some purely technical observations.  Given that it was written from scratch, rather than derived from an earlier novel, this film thrives on anachronisms.  Somerset wears a hat.  He uses a metronome instead of an alarm clock and a typewriter instead of a computer.  Although the Internet was well under way from 1990 onwards, Somerset visits the city Library to do his literary research.  The detectives use torches, when it would be much easier simply to flick a light switch.  All this seems to me to work very well.  There is a sort of deliberate archaism about it that blends seamlessly with the medieval themes. 

     Studying Doré’s illustrations for the Purgatorio, Somerset pauses over Arachne turning into a spider: possibly the creepiest and most evocative of all Doré’s Dante drawings.   John Doe’s bland disclaimer about the dead dog – “I didn’t do that.” – is a masterly piece of black humour.  This is a great film, in many ways; and in making it, the director of the truly awful Alien 3 had come a long way in a very short time. 

     The deliberately grainy, sepia-effect photography, the absence of light bulbs, the near-continuous rain all convey a murky atmosphere that reflects the murky theme very effectively. 

     That said, the blurred soundtrack – presumably deliberate for the same blurred and murky reasons – seems to me to work far less well, and you really need access to subtitles to find out what is being said.  Brad Pitt as Detective Mills is a particularly bad offender in this regard.  Except when he is yelling “Fuck off!” at somebody I find it almost impossible to hear what he is saying.  The audibility of John Doe/Kevin Spacey comes as a relief.

 

So much for technique, what about the message?  For this is a film that seems to be making a statement about something.

     When I first saw it, I thought initially that it might be a critique of urban life.  Mills has come to the City from somewhere less toxic.  Tracy wants to escape from the City to somewhere else.  Talking about his retirement – I think that is what it was about insofar as it was audible – Somerset says he wants to be “far away from here!”

     As the film progresses however, the existence of elsewhere, and the possibility of getting there, seems to diminish.  John Doe talks of, “a world this shitty”: the problem is greater than the immediate vicinity, and greater than urban decay.   Mills will end up trapped within the City’s systems.  Tracy will never escape.  Nor, it seems, will Somerset.  When asked where he will be he now simply says, “Around.” 

     You cannot escape this City, for this City is the human condition: any time, any place.  The name John Doe is an Americanism for the typical guy: a sort of American Everyman.  The society depicted by the film is possible because of universal human apathy: the whole human race is indicted.  It may not be too fanciful to see the rain as a reminder of Noah’s Flood:  impending disaster for the sins of mankind.

     The world view explored in this film is probably best described as Gnostic.  I do not mean that it is necessarily consciously so.  But when a religious temperament is denied conventional belief, then Gnosticism is often the default position; and I think that this is the case here. 

     The ancient Gnostics believed in the evil of matter and the vileness of the body; for the world had been made by a corrupt demiurge.   They rejected marriage and, above all, procreation; the best hope for this hopeless world was for the human race to die out as quickly as possible.  

     Let us consider this in the light – or dark – of the film.   John Doe declares that he has been chosen.   Even if we accept his premise that it is not wrong to murder morally guilty people, it is possible to find flaws in his line of moral reasoning: or the reasoning of the power controlling him. The glutton, for example, might not be simply gluttonous.  His body might have difficulty in processing food, in which case the issue of his obesity would be medical, as much as moral.  

     By the corpse of the lawyer chosen to represent greed, there is a quotation from The Merchant of Venice.  Or so Somerset says; actually, most of it is composed by Doe himself.  And in Shakespeare, of course, the contract falls apart because no blood is allowed; only flesh.  On that basis, Doe’s decision to cite Merchant seems ill judged since with him there is blood.  Plenty of it.

     Doe condemns the victim of pride as ugly inside for not wanting to live.  On the other hand, if you were a fashion model, relying on your face for a living, it would not be unreasonable to feel that your world had come to an end when you lost your nose.

     Doe says his victims are not innocent, but Tracy is.  All she wants is to get out of the city for the sake of her unborn baby.  By his own logic, Doe might deserve to die because of his envy.  But Tracy does not; for she is not envious.   And so on. 

     Somerset asks if Doe sees himself as chosen by a higher power.  He does not specify whether this power might be God or the Devil.  Doe has a fluorescent red cross above his bed and a bible in his bedside drawer; but that, in itself, tells us nothing.  Crucifixes feature in Black Masses.  The Devil can quote scripture for his own ends. 

     If am right about the film’s Gnosticism, then it would be meaningless, anyway, to ask such an either/or question.  There is only one higher power, and from it we can expect neither logic nor justice; for it is malign.   

     Less speculative is the conversation between Somerset and Tracy as to whether or not she should abort her baby.  Somerset says that he and his girlfriend aborted their baby because they did not want to bring a child into such a world.  That seems to me to be directly in the best traditions of Gnostic pessimism.

 

The Gnostics were brave people.  They confronted the way the world is, without the benefit of revelation.  Instead of seeing a good world – spoiled, but one day to be redeemed – they found a bad one: the product of a malign creator, and evil in its essence.  This film seems to me to be directly in that tradition.  If you confront the world’s evil as a sensitive soul, and don’t accept the Christian or the atheist explanation, then the sort of mindset depicted in Se7en will very likely be the result.