NUMBERS

Rating: Null/10 (7 July 2003)

SPOILERS! SPOILERS!
(NOT to be read by those who STILL have not seen the movie)
Seeing Se7en on TV last night, I considered myself extremely lucky that other than the very general idea of the plot, I knew nothing in advance about the development of the story and the brilliant twist at the end despite the fact that this movie has been around for so long.
With so much already said, I'm just going to take a one-angle look, from an angle that tickles my professional instinct: numbers. I have, after each of the following movies, tried to remember all of the 12 Angry Men, Dirty Dozen and Oceans 11, with various degrees of success. With Se7en, it's a slightly different thing. Everybody knows by now that there are seven murders. Nobody would believe that each murder would be introduced in a regular interval of, say, 20 minutes throughout the movie. But what did the director do to avoid a monotonous, repetitive pattern? This is what I asked myself before the movie started and told myself to watch out for.
Seven murders over seven days, but definitely not going to be one a day. Well, the first three murders have something in common: to paint a general picture of the murderer. Gluttony happens on Monday, followed by Greed on Tuesday. However, the clever little twist is that the written message GREED (written in blood) is seen first, before GLUTTONY (written in grease), which is discovered upon a revisit of the murder site. Then comes a little break on Wednesday, again to avoid the monotony. On Thursday, the discovery of SLOTH is absolutely predictable to anyone who has watched a few murder mysteries, and meant to be so.
With these first three murders, the ground is pretty well set. The inhuman, insane cruelty of the killer is confirmed in no uncertain terms. Now it is time to again break away from a routine pattern. The audience see a different number of events unfolding, some seem to be still quite predictable, some less so.
Coming to Saturday, murders number 4 and 5, of two women, are glossed over quicker, because there is not much information to be added. At this point, the audience falls into the usual mindset of whodunit-guessing. Then comes the first clever twist that makes Se7en stand out among murder mysteries. The sudden appearance and surrendering of Spacey (whose name I think was kept away from the opening credit, on purpose) the killer throws the audience considerably off balance. Where is the movie heading and how is it going to wrap up with the last two murders, they begin to ask.

The more perceptive of the audience would by this time sense that this is not a whodunit thing and tantalisingly curious as to what that final twist is. Whatever you call it, it is nothing short of brilliant. In the last two killings, the true victims are not the persons killed, but rather the killer! The long waited ENVY and WRATH victimise Spacey and Pitt into killers, respectively. In the end, they did bring death to Spacey and whatever punishment the system deals out to Pitt.
If I were to split hair, envy does not really play a significant part in Spacey's action. It is rather used by him to complete a most ingenious plot. It is however so clever that you will tend to give your nod of consent to this artificial application of one of the seven sins in the plot.