The triumph of missirection: David Fincher's Seven

 Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Gwyneth Paltrow. Dir. David Fincher, New Line, 1995.

I'm not a fan of serial killers. They don't interest me, never mind fascinate or enthrall. Given my own history of mental illness, some kinds of abnormal or afflicted psychology interest me, but serial killers and mass murders don't number among them. When I was younger, Satanism did fascinate me. Supernatural evil, as opposed to the more mundane, human kind, had a strong hold on me, which persisted off and on until my 40s. Satanic evil functioned as a philosophical license. I could think violent, toxic, cruel things and tell myself it was all part of advancing Satan's influence. 

I actually prayed to Satan every morning and night, offering up my soul in exchange for dominion. Dominion is a fancy euphemism for sexual mastery of women. The world knows no shortage of women turned on my being dominated, and offers no shortage of ways of meeting them. For me, "satanism" was a child's way of trying to get the steak without raising the cow. It was a child's approach to life. I don't know how to handle rejection, therefore women are wayward, therefore I need some diabolical power to take the place of actual work. 

At some point, I realized I used "satanism" as an excuse to think in ways I've always found repellent. Hateful thinking filled me up with negativity which did not liberate, enlighten, or exalt me. It weakened me, sickened me, turned me into a liar. I'm always reluctant to take credit, but at some point in the last decade I started to grow up a little. Enough to see the toxicity and absurdity of being a fanboy for Evil. 

For me, serial killers represent that absurdity and toxicity. More, they perfectly embody the truth in the idea that evil is banal. Serial killers are never interesting to me. Their reasons are always some variant on a basic narrative. 

"I'm in pain, I'm sad, I feel impotent to affect my life or others, therefore I'll take it out on harmless people and their blameless families." 

Worse, much of the fascination with this kind of human evil roots itself in the punk-rock community. There was a time when society not only rejected but victimized and brutalized punk fans. Kids I knew who liked punk, new wave, any kind of alternative rock, got stuffed inside their school lockers, stuffed into garbage cans, bullied and beaten up. Rejected by the status quo, pushed into the margins, punks went looking for symbols of their rejection, and serial killers and mass murderers made ideal choices. You want to reject me, marginalize and demonize me, here, I'll give you a reason. I'll act as if Charlie Manson was ever anything more than a loser with faulty wiring and a case of murderous narcissism. 

But he wasn't. He was an ignorant fool, just smart enough to be dangerous. As Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring learned the lethal way. He was a small, sad man and if fetishisizing him once made transgressive sense, we no longer live in a world where people with green hair wearing black leather get beat up daily. It no longer makes any kind of sense to immerse ourselves in human evil. Myself, anyway. 

As such, I've always felt ambivalent about serial-killer movies. The few I've enjoyed make their human monsters something they almost never are. Interesting. Silence of the Lambs is a great movie, but largely because its monster is such a grotesque caricature of actual serial killers. I watch Silence of the Lambs as a very dark, disturbed fantasy, not some sort of fictionalized true crime story. Ed Gein, the basis for Hannibal Lecter, as well as Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw franchise, did awful, unspeakable things, but he was a barely-literate creep, not a philosophical visionary who got carried away. 

Most serial-killer movies bore me. I remember seeing Gothika and being incredibly disappointed when all its supernatural elements acted as mere window dressing for a riff on Silence of the Lambs. 

All this is to explain, to myself as much as anyone, why I enjoyed Seven the handful of times I saw it in the '90s and the Aughts, yet never became a rabid fanboy. It never quite spoke to me. It was a serial killer movie where the serial killer wins. Awe. Some. 

The problem in my dismissal of David Fincher's 1995 film is that I misunderstood what I saw. I insisted on seeing Seven as a psychological study of Kevin Spacey's John Doe, even after Morgan Freeman observes he has transformed himself into a literal nonentity. Two nights ago, I realized that Seven isn't a study of John Doe, that Fincher understands the banality of evil. Seven is a psychological study of Brad Pitt's Det. David Mills. 

John Doe may be one of the most elaborate and successful filmic red herrings in the last 25 years. His murders, the way each is artfully, horrifically staged, and the clues he leaves behind act as misdirection, every great illusionist's best friend. They're literalized smoke&mirrors. His "I'm nobody" shtik isn't an act. In the context of the story he is nobody. His crimes, his affect once caught, act as foils for Pitt's glib bravado and smouldering rage. He's the dark funhouse mirror reflecting Pitt's true nature. Not a brave, chivalrous knight in tarnished armor but a vain, frightened bully, a man with so little life of the mind he's an ideal target for Doe. 

Seven's progression over seven days of murder and mayhem marks the progression of Pitt's bluster and swagger, his grandstanding, his refusal to do the research Freeman undertakes. He doesn't ever armor up as Freeman does. He refuses to believe a common criminal could ever exert power over him. The more he resists, the more he lays himself bare to Doe's influence. He becomes the personification of Wrath, the final deadly sin in Doe's reordering of them. 

Even though Doe plays Det. Mills like a Stradivarius, it doesn't make him more fascinating. Freeman's observation that Doe's martyrdom is belied by murdering the innocent is the one great truth in the film, and Doe's explosive reaction to it tells the audience Freeman's right. He turns into just another moralistic bore, so lost in his sense of importance he has deluded himself into believing his victims deserved their fate because they suffered from vanity, from compulsion and addiction. Doe is jusr another privileged white guy who believes himself qualified to stand in judgment of others. He's as banal, as boring, as evil ever gets. 

The only real surprise for me, beyond misunderstanding Pitt's centrality, is that his deadly sin is wrath, since all his behavior leading up to the picture's climax speaks to pride going before a fall. In a sense, though, Fincher suggests Detective Mills embodies all the deadly sins on the way to becoming Wrath. He's intellectually slothful. He lusts for recognition and glory in his career, moving his young family to a dangerous city for the sake of his career. He envies Freeman's status and rank in the department. He's a glutton for the life of a street cop, always wanting to be out mixing it up. His pride in what are mostly Freeman's successful ploys blinds him to his vulnerability. In the end, his wrath destroys him. 

As Our Man in the Valley pointed out the other night, all great noir premises itself on an average, decent guy being consumed by the muck in which he immerses himself as he searches for truth. Fincher's film certainly has all the visual qualities of a great noir. Seven may be the most atmoslheric movie since Bladerunner. I could almost smell the cigarette smoke, feel the dank humidity of its rooms. The tension starts out palpable and escalates until it sucks the air out of every scene. Fincher never gives the audience a single moment, not even when the sun comes out, where it can believe the movie will end happily. Given this, it's surely triumphal when Seven manages to exceed all its warnings and go even darker than expected. 

Seven inverts and subverts every trope of the serial killer movie, breathing new life into the noir. It uses the banality of evil to mindbending effect, and that is the greatest kind of good. I think Seven may rank as one of the best, smartest movies of the last quarter century. It does not get better than this.