SE7EN re7isited

[nutmegalomaniac]

This is from an email I sent on Thursday. But it turned into a mini-essay I liked. So I'm posting it here.

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In my mission to get through my stack of unwatched DVDs, I put on Seven last night. I hadn't seen it since probably the 90s, and it was a good way to prepare for Zodiac, which I'm pretty excited for.

When I saw Seven at the age of

Comments

[littlegirltoast]

Well look don't hold me to this because I haven't seen it but once and that was when it first came out for rental, but it seemed to be a wholly gratuitous revenge flick - like a gothic Braveheart! The female character who got raped was a mere extension of the male character who would have to avenge her - in both instances it felt like the writers' idea of the worst thing you could do to a guy would be to rape his girlfriend, and it also is such an unquestionably vile act that it automatically justifies any inhuman response, which is what the whole rest of the movie consists of. Brutal "ironic" killings, just like in Se7en. Don't they in fact both involve a character stuck all over his body with needles?

This is completely off-the-cuff and made through the haze of years that I have spent trying to forget those movies, so forgive me if it doesn't withstand even passing scrutiny, but would it be wrong to say that The Crow and John Doe are basically on the same mission? I know that The Crow is after specific targets and John Doe is making generic examples and also the Crow can't be killed or harmed so that movie is kind of like watching someone play Doom with God Mode on for two hours, in the tension department... but I think the only substantial difference between the characters of the Crow and John Doe is that we are subjected to the moment of inspiration for the former's homicidal endeavours, whereas the latter just gets to explain them to us. Having endured a depiction of what got The Crow so angry, we are supposed to be cheering for him, while with John Doe we are supposed to start off unsympathetic but end off not so sure.

I'm sorry if my analysis suffers from the distance I've put between myself and these movies! This is not supposed to be a final word, obviously I'm not qualified for that. It's just how I remember them and how I feel about what I remember!

[nutmegalomaniac]

There's irony in the murder scenes of both Seven and The Crow, though neither film contains the aforementioned needle scene.

Re: The Crow - I think you're looking at selected trees, and seeing about half the forest. With Fincher's Zodiac (which is all trees and no forest) this wouldn't matter. I don't like the revenge genre either, but The Crow is beautifully done.

Eric Draven isn't enacting his inhuman rights from his girlfriends rape. He's avenging her rape and murder, as well as his own murder, and the destruction of both of their happiness. This isn't justifying Draven's inhuman response (he isn't human, he's dead), nor is vengeance validated as his masculine responsibility. The director Alex Proyas has The Crow seek revenge as a refuge of his dead soul. But he makes the actual dramatic arc of the movie not the people Draven kills, but Draven's own struggle for peace. The movie climaxes when he's learned to let go of his hate, recognizing that love is stronger. That's why it's deceitful as a revenge picture. Proyas is interested in navigating through darkness. It's not really about his murders.

The film works a lot better (and it holds up really well to multiple viewings) when focusing on it as an emotive tonal piece, rather than a series of narrative events. Watching it that way, it can seem a little repetitive.

I don't know if the film took on this empathy after Brandon Lee was killed during its making, but Proyas plays it as a very sincere eulogy.

[r_lex]

I like your answer better than the one I wrote below. Do you mind if I link this discussion in my journal?

[nutmegalomaniac]

Please do.

[r_lex]

S'all good dude, we're grown ups here. I know some peeps have been giving you guff for your opinions of late, but I'm not about to.

Well, she wasn't just raped, she was brutally murdered. I've watched the movie a lot of times, and although it doesn't flinch from that aspect of the crime, I don't think it plays it up more than the fact that she was also beat up and killed. I know that seems like weird grounds to defend it on, but I think perhaps your distance from the film has made the rape aspect of the story more lurid than it's actual treatment. I agree with you intellectually that no crime makes a brutal response morally acceptable, but from my gut, if something god forbid were to happen to Lisa I would want to see the perpetrators harmed, preferably in the most violent fashion possible.

At any rate, the story was written by James O'Barr, who's girlfriend was raped and murdered, although obviously in somewhat different circumstances than the film. Presumably writing and drawing The Crow was a kind of cathartic act for him, a kind of wish fulfillment. Now admittedly it does try to dress up acts of vigilante justice as acts of love which is problematic for me on a lot of levels, but I can understand where it comes from, and I find it hard to fault it on that level.