A FILM BY DAVID FINCHER

STARRING: BRADD PITT AND MORGAN FREEMAN

By Ken Balch World of Ideas 390 Prof. George Adams

The movie "Seven" is a depiction of the inevitable fall of mankind through the grizzly murders of John Doe (Kevin Spacey). Doe commits a series of methodical, exacting, and grotesque murders, as portrayed in the Seven Deadly Sins listed in the novel Marques de Sade, works of Milton, Chaucer, and Dante. The Seven Sins consist of Pride, Envy, Greed, Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony, and Lust. These were set out to show mankind what they must avoid to find their way into Heaven. The killer (Doe) cleverly commits each Sin in such a way that it seems; to the older, wiser detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman), that the man is preaching a sermon. Telling each victim to commit an act of attrition for his or her Sin. Later this notion turns out to be true, for in fact the killer is trying to send out a message of how despicable and ugly mankind has become.

We are introduced to Mills (Pitt), at the scene of the first crime. He (Pitt) is a young, brash, full of anger and energy detective. He sees the killer as

Now with the apparent killer in their sights, the police force closes in to put an end to this brutality. When raiding the killer's home, an unexpected twist occurrs. Instead of finding the killer, they found the third sin, a man who had been kept alive with drugs, ant-biotics, and an assortment of other chemicals. This man was a living corpse, his body was gone along with his mind; his sin was that of Sloth, a sign of laziness and slumber. This man was put through a complete hell, yet he was alive, with no hope.

"Seven" is a dark sadistic look at the demise of mankind and it is done through the Seven Deadly Sins, which were shown in the works of Milton, Chaucer, Dante, and in the Marquis de Sade, giving it an almost sophisticated feel of the murders, an atonement for the sin, if you will. Yet, it is a symbol of how dehumanized our society has become. The film is set in an undisclosed prototypical large city in the United States. Crime in these cities has become almost second nature to the other atrocities going on around them. The atmosphere of the film is a gloomy always-raining dark look at the inner dwellings of a large city. The film is set this way to give off the feeling of hopelessness and utter demise of life. The murders follow the same kind of feeling, complete hopelessness, and gloomy nature of the sins. The plot is full of symbolism, good vs. evil, calmness vs. unbridled anger, and youth vs. older, wiser age. A scene in which this is resembled, is when a more cautious Somerset (Freeman), is shown in a distinguished library, looking through the works of Milton, Dante, and Chaucer, for keys to the murders. Where Mills (Pitt) is in his car, trying to read the Marquis de Sade and he gets frustrated and says he does not understand this faggot. Then an office comes along and hands him the Cliffs Notes to the material mentioned that Somerset read. Another scene shows the respect Somerset has for John Doe; he calls his murders a sermon and he is preaching to us. Where Mills counters by saying "just because the guys got a library card, doesn't make him Yoda." These are just a couple of examples of how the film compares and contrasts youth and older, wiser age. However, I feel the goal of the film was to show the ultimate sins of man, the Seven Deadly Sins.

The fifth sin was that of a man being forced to have sex with a prostitute while wearing a sharp bladed sexual device. Doe held a gun to the man's head and forced him to penetrate the woman with the device, thus slicing her from the inside out. The woman was the victim of the sin of Lust, a sin of the flesh, usually explained through sexual weakness.

Before the surrender of John Doe, we are walked through a gruesome world of seven murders, which follow the Seven Deadly Sins list presented by Milton, Chaucer, and Dante. First, we see an obese man face down in a plate of spaghetti, killed by eating himself to dea

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Approximate Word count = 1955
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)