Moving Audiences to Think About What Moves Them
A Review of Seven
by Bill Johnson

Most commercial films are designed to offer a roller coaster ride that primarily appeals to the senses. As an audience is led through escalating conflict and plot twists with appealing, attractive characters, the audience is offered thrill after thrill. Feeling after feeling, emotional after emotion. Most films are designed to move people to experience pleasurable states of feeling. Seven is a different kind of film. It offers its thrills in a way that its audience is forced to think about why it's enjoying what it's watching. The story is designed to make the audience pay a price for enjoying the voyeuristic thrills offered by the storyteller.

How this story is constructed to offer its particular, thoughtful fulfillment is the purpose of this review.

A review of this story and its structure starts with its title. The number Seven both gives the audience a sense of orientation and a sense of anticipation. What does it refer to? In a subtle way the audience is already being drawn into the world of this story.

The movie opens with quick, flashing images. A man cutting off his fingertips. Someone reading a book. Someone blacking out passages. All of these suggestive images will be revealed for what they are in this story. The questions about these images will be answered.

The opening scene shows us a man at home with his back to us, Morgan Freeman, walking away from a chess board. This suggests he's an intellectual, a man who thinks about how one move affects another. By starting this moment with Freeman's back to the camera, the audience is drawn in a beat to want to know who he is., what he looks like. This process of always finding a way to draw the audience deeper into a scene, deeper into a story, is repeated in many films.

Next we see him putting on his tie. A small touch, but he's knotting the tie. He's not in a hurry. This moment of his knotting his tie later serves a purpose in the story's plot. Note also that it's only when the point is clearly expressed about the tie, does the camera tilt up to reveal his face. It's another aspect to how our physically 'seeing' him is made dramatic, while the details we are shown give us a sense of this man that is important to the telling of this story.

He's shown carefully arranging his pen, knife, badge (which quietly reveals he's a detective) neatly lined up on his dresser. He picks a piece of lint off his jacket before putting it on.

He creates a neat, orderly world. The unspoken story question that arises from this scene, will he be able to maintain that order and dignity in this story? How will it be challenged? That it will be challenged is the reason for it's being presented here so carefully. This makes this character 'ripe' as the story opens, and the plot of the story will attack his values. Details that didn't speak to an underlying purpose in the story would not be appropriate here; they would disorient the audience in a subtle way.

The scene cut to a dead man on the floor in a pool of blood. This is the opposite of what we've just seen. It's passionate violence. A voice-over describes what the neighbors heard, "two hours of screaming, then the gun went off, both barrels."

Showing this neat, meticulous man in this world we know now is so alien to his inner life naturally raises a question, what's he doing in this other world? What's he trying to accomplish?

We see him - Sommerset - looking at some drawings on the wall of the murder scene. He comments, "Just look at all that passion on the wall."

Bored cop, "Yeah, but it's a done deal; just the paperwork."

Sommerset notices a child's drawing on the refrigerator and asks if the child saw anything: he's observant of details, peripheral details that may be related. The other cop, obviously unaware there was child, is upset by the question. He goes into a tirade about Sommerset and his questions that ends with his comment that he'll be glad to get rid of Sommerset. This sets up the questions, where and when is he going? Will the story have an impact on his leaving? Questions are being raised that the story will answer.

The drama of this exchange is heightened by the cop openly attacking Sommerset. A story-teller can often heighten the dramatic effect of a story by letting characters loose to verbally spar.

The cop's last comment, "He's dead. The wife killed him. Anything else has nothing to do with us."

This story, however, is designed to show us what these events do have to do with US. By have a character say this, the storyteller suggests the purpose of this story. Understanding what their story is about, the storyteller understood how to introduce their story.

Detective Mills (Brat Pitt) arrives, hurrying up some stairs. He offers his name, then the scene cuts away. By just showing us this much of him, we're drawn in to want to know more about him.

Mills, "I just got in town twenty minutes ago; they got me here."

Which raises the question, why's he here? Where did he come from? It's quick, focused on work on the part of the storyteller.

The scene cuts to outside the building. Sommerset suggests they find a bar to talk, but Mills wants to go directly to the precinct.

Mills, "Not much time for this transition, you know."

We now know Sommerset is leaving soon, and that Mills is an impatient, somewhat pushy guy. When Sommerset asks why Mills wanted to be transferred here, Mills doesn't get the question. This points out that he's not thoughtful like Sommerset. Immediately, these two men are presented as distinct characters, and distinct in a way that they are naturally in conflict. The storyteller designs characters in ways that compel them to react to each other.

Mills, "I guess the same reasons you had, at least before you decided to quit. Yeah?"

Sommerset, stopping, "You just met me." He wants to know how Mills came to this conclusion.

Mills, "I thought I could do some good." It's naming Mills' purpose here.

Mills interprets Sommerset's questions as a challenge and reacts pugnaciously, saying, "It would be great for me if we didn't start out by kicking each other in the balls." Which is what he is doing, but not Sommerset. Then he backs down, saying "But you're calling the shots, Lieutenant."

We're being told he's impatient, not stupid.

When Sommerset tells him to watch and listen, Mills again takes it as an insult, referring to his five years experience in homicide.

"But not here," Sommerset responds. This suggests that Mills is entering into a new, different, more violent world than the one he came from. Then Sommerset tells him to remember during the next seven days he's to observe and learn.

This suggests Sommerset, based on this conversation, doesn't plan to teach Mills; he's already writing him off. It's movement for the story and the two characters based on this exchange.

We cut to Sommerset at home in bed. He turns on a metronome by his bed: he's man who has trouble sleeping, turning his mind off. He needs to hypnotize himself to sleep. He needs order in his world to be at peace, but something intrudes. He hears voices in his head; sounds. He's remembering the unsolved cases, the solved cases that still made no sense. His job intrudes into his private life. We have a sense now of why he wants to stop being a detective. It's taken over his life.

Sound of thunder.

Cut to strange images with jarring music : razor blades cutting off fingerprints, journals, threading a needle, cutting words (God)- etc. The credits run over the images.

We're being drawn into, shown this world, by these suggestions. Shown the world of the man who will be unseen for most of the story. But what we are shown of his world begins the process of drawing us in to want to know more. Although it isn't fully apparent at this stage, the characters of Sommerset, Mills and the unseen killer suggest the context for this story. The full meaning of that context is revealed as the story progresses.

Cut to: Monday. City. Mills waking in bed with his wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow). He looks at his watch. We're drawn in to the question of who she is by how she's introduced.

He puts on a pre-tied tie; this is a guy living life in a hurry. He brushes at his hair briefly. He looks out the window. He's ready to go. Now.

He's the opposite of Sommerset.

As he sits on the bed beside his wife, he gets a call. He snatches at the phone, but it still wakes her.

She brushes the sleep from his eye and refers to him as Serpico, which gives us a sense of how he wants to be perceived. By how they interact, we feel they're in a loving relationship. This is vital to this story that we feel/experience this point. This scene is long enough for us to fully take in this point, to observe it, to internalize it. There is another subtle point here, that the audience are here as observers.

Scene cuts to Mills standing in the pouring rain holding two cups of coffee. It's clear he's outside a crime scene. It's also clear he's trying to make up for what happened the previous day with Sommerset. It gives a sense that at heart he's a nice guy. It's movement, then, from how he acted the previous day. Characters need to change, react to a story's events in a way that is visible to a story's audience. Characters who hit the same character 'note' in scene after scene demonstrate the action of the story is having no effect on them. If it's not affecting them, why should it affect the story's audience?

Sommerset gets flashlights and gloves from a car trunk, then refuses the coffee, which Mills sets down on the sidewalk.

Mills, "Nothing's been touched; everything's like I found it." He's trying to do what Sommerset asked, but he's still doing it in his impatient way. He's consistent in his nature.

Sommerset, "What time was death established."

Mills, "Like I said, I didn't touch anything."

He's not answering directly; he's trying to answer the question he thinks Sommerset is asking.

They head in to a crime scene. Mills kibitzes with the policeman who fills them in on the scene. Mills tries to show he's on top of things but comes off awkward, asking how they know the dead man is dead when no one has checked the dead man for vital signs.

"So that's the way it's done around here..."

When they enter the dark house, Sommerset questions Mills point in picking an argument with the policeman. Mills responds, "Don't know. How many times has Barney Fife found dead bodies who aren't really dead?" His actions/questions aren't directed, purposeful- just combative.

"Drop it," Sommerset directs him.

The set up with the dark house is that it keeps us focused on what is important, the two characters, and also makes the environment creepy, suggestive. It also suggests the two men are literally 'in the dark.'

We see the dead man at first from the back. This pulls us in to want to know more, to see more. It's that subtle process of the story, making its audience aware that they want to view the grisly scenes.

After finding the grotesquely obese body, Mills makes snide comments like "Better Homes and Gardens," while Sommerset notices the cabinet full of spaghetti sauce. Mills asks who said it was a murder, and jumps to conclusions about it being a coronary: "This guy's heart must be the size of canned ham. If this isn't a coronary, well...I don't know."

Then..."Whoops!" when Sommerset shows him the bound feet. This excites Mills. He starts talking about another case- irrelevant, except that he talks about a man who stabbed himself in the back, which Mills metaphorically will do at the end. Sommerset asks him to be quiet.

Mills finds some vomit under the table, but doesn't notice if there's blood in it. Again he jumps to the wrong conclusion.

The doctor comes in and comments on the moody lighting.

Mills, "You think it's poison?"

Sommerset sends him out to help the beat cops question the neighbors. Mills hesitates. This is a dramatic moment. He knows he's being dismissed here. For him, this is the ultimate insult.

The doctor holds up the dead man's face- macabre! "He's dead!" "Thank you, Doctor."

Cut to car in rain.

Mills, "You've seen my files, right? You've seen the things I've done."

Sommerset, "Nope."

Mills complains about being sent out, that he's a detective. Sommerset defends his decision, refers to the integrity of the crime scene. Mills again misinterprets Sommerset, saying "Just don't jerk me off."

Sommerset doesn't respond. This draws us in to want to know the outcome of this conflict.

Cut to coroner's lab. The dead body sewn up after autopsy. Still very grotesque. Mills displays lack of compassion. "How did the fat fuck get out his door?"

"Please, it's obvious he was a shut-in." Mills is impatient during the coroner's explanation about the stomach and how it's been stretched until his stomach burst.

Sommerset, "This man ate until he burst?"

Mills is dissatisfied with his ambiguous conclusion.

Sommerset asked about the bruises on the head; they are suggestive of a gun being pressed to his head. Mills declares with satisfaction: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a homicide."

Cut to outside police station. In a voice over, Sommerset summarizes the murder for his boss, that it happened over a period of twelve hours. The audience's need to feel 'in the know' is being satisfied here. This also clarifies and summarizes the murder for us - a particularly heinous murder in our (thus far limited) experience.

In the office, we see Sommerset, Mills and their boss. Sommerset concludes the act itself must have had some meaning; that it wasn't a crime of passion. And it's just the beginning.

Captain, "Somebody had a problem with the fat boy and decided to torture him."

Sommerset disagrees. The killer had to make a second trip to the store for more food.

Then Sommerset announces that he'd like to be reassigned. "This can't be my last duty. It's just going to go on and on."

Captain, "It won't be the first time you've left unfinished cases."

This clearly upsets Sommerset. He responds that he worked the cases as far as they could be resolved with the information he had. We know have a fuller answer to what was keeping him up the first night we met him.

Sommerset continues that it should not be Mill's first case, which pisses Mills off. Their conflict continues to heat up.

Mills demands Somerset say to his face that he's not ready, so Sommerset responds that 'it's too soon' for him to have this kind of case. Mills goes on as if Sommerset hadn't spoken.

Mills asks for the case, but the Captain tells him to 'shut up' and says he's putting him on something else, and Sommerset has to stay on this case.

From what we know about Mills, this must clearly hurt him. This story has been designed to bring about the collision of these characters.

Cut to Tuesday. Newspaper headline says "Murder has a new uptown address."

Mills arrives to investigate amidst a press conference by District Attorney Martin Talbot. Someone important was killed. As Mills walks through the impromptu, he overhears snide remarks: "Who's the kid" kind of thing. He enters the crime scene. He asks if they have anything yet, then send the investigators out for coffee. He immediately violates the integrity of the crime scene by sitting at the desk and swiveling in the chair as opposed to Sommerset's cautious, 'don't touch anything' approach.

He hears the news breaking on the TV. We learn Defense Attorney Eli Gould was the victim-murdered in his office. Mills hears the DA say the law enforcement officials have their very best men on this case and it will be the definition of swift justice. It's an important case. This swells Mills' ego and also puts the pressure on him to do well.

The irony here is that it is the killer in control of this case, not the impatient Mills.

Only then does Mills sees the word GREED written on the rug in blood. He was so caught up in himself he didn't see the obvious right in front of him. Then he sees a picture of Gould's wife with blood smeared around her eyes like spectacles.

We now have two more questions. Why was Greed written on the floor? Why the blood used to create spectacles? The audience is being set up to track the story's plot.

Cut to Sommerset's office. A workman is scraping his name off the glass.

The Captain comes in and tells Sommerset about Gould and the word GREED; that he was bled to death.

"Greed," Sommerset repeats. "Yeah, in blood," the Captain says, adding, "Mills is heading up the investigation."

The Captain asks Somerset what he's going to do when he retires. He talks about puttering about.

Captain, "Don't you feel that feeling? You're not going to be a cop anymore."

Somerset, "That's the whole idea." He wants to tune out those sounds/images that keep him awake.

He tells a story about a man attacked and stabbed in both eyes. Somerset, "I don't understand this place anymore."

He's the voice of reason sitting in for the rest of us.

Captain, "You were made for this work and I don't think you can deny that."

This exchange continues to cue us in to the dramatic purpose of the story and the characters within the story.

On his way out, the Captain drops off a jar of plastic pieces found in the obese man's stomach. "They were fed to him."

Somerset looks at them. Both Somerset and the audience are being pulled deeper into the question of the obese man's death and what these pieces of plastic might suggest. It's a features of thrillers that the audience is allowed to learn information alongside a main character. It's an element that makes a story pleasurable for its audience. They're allowed to consider relevant clues, to feel a part of figuring out what's happening.

Cut to the obese man's house. Sommerset cuts through the sealed off police investigation paper.

He looks in the fridge. Nothing. But as he's closing the door he notices scraping off the vinyl floor. The pieces fit to those he was given. He realizes the refrigerator has been moved.

Pulling it back he sees the word GLUTTONY written in grease on the wall. And a note. He pulls it off.

We're given an answer to the meaning of the plastic pieces, but it sets up two more questions: what's written in the note? And what's the connection between the two cases? Cut to Police station. Sommerset is telling Captain and Mills about the note. It reads: "Long is the way and hard that out of hell leads up to light." Sommerset identifies it as a quotation from Milton -- Paradise Lost.

"Alright, I'm confused." says the Captain.

Sommerset says it means it IS just beginning. "There are seven deadly sins, Captain. GLUTTONY, GREED, SLOTH, WRATH, PRIDE, LUST and ENVY."

He hands the photos to Mills.

Sommerset leaves, saying, "You can expect 5 more of these." When the Captain says, "Wait a minute," Sommerset replies "I can't get involved in these. He wanted it," pointing to Mills, who agrees, "I'm all over it."

Cut to a knife hitting a target. Sommerset's home. He's thinking.

Cut to outside. Night. Sommerset catches a cab in the rain. "Where're you headed?" the cabby asks. Sommerset stares out the window at a drug OD on the sidewalk: "Far away from here."

Cut to building. A guard lets him in.

We're being drawn in to the question, where are we? Moments here are always given a dramatic shape.

We then realize we're in a library. Sommerset teases the guards about playing poker when there are all these books. "A world of knowledge at your fingertips...and what do you do? You play poker all night."

Guard, "We got culture...coming out our ass."

One guard puts on some classical music. He selects Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Intercut with Mills studying photos of the obese man. He can think about things.

The lyrical music continues throughout, forming an irony with Mills' pursuit of clues in the physical, the mundane; and Sommerset's pursuit of the classical, mythical clues to the murders. A study of the human condition. Somerset looks for the truth within the larger truth.

Sommerset find's Dante's Divine Comedy. He reads.

Mills studies the obese man's feet.

Sommerset reads in the library.

Mills studies photo of Gould, and reports that "victim was forced to mutilate himself." (This is new information for us.)

Sommerset looks at classical illustrations of Dante's Hell; all grotesque but in a more literary fashion. There are several decapitated figures. He makes a list of references for Mills.

Shot of Mills from above rolling his head.

Sommerset continues to read, words like "mutilated, torn windpipe (refers back to obese man's swollen esophagus), blood, slain etc. coming into focus. These seem direct references to the murders- inspiration at least for the murderer.

Mills watches a game on TV.

His wife looks at him from another room.

One guard suggests Sommerset will miss them, and he allows as how he just might. He Xeroxes diagrams of Dante's hell and the seven deadly sins. He folds the copies up.

Sommerset drops a envelope off on Mill's desk.

Cut to Wednesday. Mills runs through the rain to his car. He reads Dante but doesn't understand it. He gets really pissed off- he's frustrated over this case and what he doesn't understand. A cop knocks on the window. He rolls down the window and the cop hands him a package. He rips it open to reveal Cliff's Notes of Dante, Chaucer etc. from Sommerset. Even this act of kindness frustrates Mills; it reminds him of what he doesn't know.

Cut to office door with Detective Mills written on it. Mills enters with a box of stuff. Sommerset is sitting at the front desk; he moves to a side desk to give Mills the front desk. We're shown the graciousness of Sommerset.

Again, the distinction between the two men is always sharp and delineated.

Mills unpacks, stuffing the cliff notes surreptitiously into a drawer. The phone rings but Sommerset tells Mills it comes as a package deal; he's to answer the phone. It's Mills' wife. We hear him asking, "Why?" It pulls us into, why what?

He begins, however, by saying, "I appreciate the offer, but..." Then she says something that leads him to agree to come. Question, what did she say?

He hands Mills the phone...but the line is dead. Mills wants to know what she wanted. He tells Mills he's been invited to supper.

Mills is surprised.

So, I'm sure, is the audience. Nicely shaped scene. Even the seemingly mundane here is offered in a fresh way.

Cut to Tracy opening the apartment door for the men. She says she's heard a lot about Sommerset, except his first name, which we discover is William. She introduces him to David (Mills).

Tracy, "Good name, William."

Mills goes off to see the "kids" (dogs). This shows us another side to Mills. Again we're put in the position of observing him in another room.

The three chat and it comes out Tracy and David were high school sweethearts; she relates she married him because he was "the funniest person she ever met."

Sommerset is surprised. The audience would be as well. Again, another small moment shaped to its full potential.

Sommerset, "It's unusual, that level of commitment."

When he starts to take his coat off Tracy stares at his gun with concern and confesses no matter how often she sees them she can never get used to guns.

"Same here," Sommerset agrees.

Cut to after dinner. Tracy asks Sommerset if he's ever been married.

Mills objects to the personal nature of the question. Sommerset answers he was close once, but it didn't happen. Sommerset answers that "anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me finds me disagreeable."

Tracy, "How long have you lived here?"

Sommerset, "Too long."

It becomes clear Tracy is not adjusted to the city yet; she is unhappy. Then the subway shakes the house. Mills explains how they were "sold" on the apartment without being told how close it was to the train.

Sommerset and Tracy laugh.

This unforced, naturalistic moment actually speaks deeply to what's being set up in this story. We're being drawn in to care about these characters, because to care about them will compel the audience to confront the issues raised by the story. It's why, again, Seven is different than most thrillers. The point here isn't just to get us to feel something about these characters; it's to get us to feel something in preparation to asking us to think about them, their situation in their story world, and our situation in relationship to them, and our relationship to our world and what this story says about our world. These kind of touches don't just 'happen' in a story. They can be constructed and designed by the storyteller who understands the craft of storytelling.

©2000 Bill Johnson

Seven, Part Two