Body language

Rating: 10/10 (21 July 2005)

"Se7en" is one of my all time favorite films. It has stayed with me ever since my first viewing. I must have seen it 6-7 times and I still get a quiver down my spine, when I watch certain scenes. I don't think I can say this is true of very many other films.
I think the reason why this film made such an impression on me is because it speaks to the intellect thorough the body and visa versa. It makes it evident that although western civilization has subscribed to the vision of the separation between body/mind, we cannot separate these to entities in our experience of reality. We cannot exactly determine whether we make decisions based upon gut-reactions or if we make them through reasoning.
The first part of the film plays mainly upon the capacity of the viewer at imagining physical pain. The best example being the pimp who has been lying in his bed for a year, but who is still alive. The first time I saw that scene, I felt nauseous and disgusted. I thought of it as a straight forward gut-reaction, this man who has suffered such pain, and he is still alive.
The darkness of the city, the bleakness of the future for people living there coupled with the acute presence of tenderness in the characters also strikes me. Once again I had a very physical reaction to the scene where Somerset speaks Mills' wife about her being pregnant. Although he himself has chosen not to bring up children in such a harsh world he says "If you decide to have them, spoil them every way that you can." Every time I see this scene I find myself crying.
When we finally reach the end of the film, when we are transported from the rainy dark city to the open and nowhere-to-hide place where John Doe wants to deliver his package. The dialog of the serial killer has the same effect on me every time - I get a stomach ache... The brilliance of it all being that I cannot exactly explain where this stomach ache comes from. Do I get a stomach ache simply because this man is such an eloquent incarnation of evil? Or is it mainly because I cannot help but agree with some of the things that he is saying? "Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial."
John Doe has a lot in common with Somerset, who also feels despair at the way of the world: "I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue."
John Doe's actions, his evil master plan marks him as an insane person, who has transgressed the taboos of a "civilised" society, even though his deed was to punish other transgressors.
Throughout the film we have had to imagine all the terrible deeds that John Doe performed on people of - granted - questionable moral dispositions. We get to see him, and listen to his tale. However appalling his actions are, the actual fact that I as a viewer can agree with some of the things that he is saying turns the physical nausea of imagination from the first part into a kind of intellectual nausea... How can I agree with him even a little bit? This in turn once again creates a physical reaction - a stomach ache. I get a physical reaction as a response to my own reasoning.
It reminds me that we all have some type of evil within us, we want pedophiles and evil lawyers to get what they deserve. We can imagine doing something to put things right. But we wouldn't ever do it - that would make us insane. We can imagine this exactly the way the film has let us imagine the pain afflicted, but not let us see it.
In short, my fascination with this film comes from the fact that it speaks to the intellect through the body and visa versa. It shows me how experience cannot really be separated into body/soul. At the same time as it shows me exactly how much I experience the mind and the body to be two separated entities.
A true masterpiece!