SE7EN: 4K UHD Blu-ray (New Line Cinema, 1995) Warner Home Video
Ernest Hemingway
once declared the world a beautiful place worth fighting for…only the latter
half, to be believed by one of our central protagonists in the bone-chilling
epilogue to David Fincher’s macabre masterpiece of crime/fiction, Se7en
(1995). If Se7en plays with more apocalyptic verve today, it is only
because life in America, and, the world at large, have become far more
penetratingly bleak since the picture’s premiere; a sad indictment on the clairvoyance
of Fincher, as a popcorn mandarin, whose crystal ball had already corroded with
a dystopian view of a pop culture gone utterly mad. The initial ‘test audience’
pre-screening of Se7en was not exactly what either Fincher or New Line
Cinema – the studio footing the bills – expected, with one woman in the
audience declaring “the people who made this ought to be shot”. Aside:
today, someone might have very well taken her up on that snap assessment.
But Se7en
soon garnered the popular press of reigning critics, most praising not only the
movie’s noir-stylized absence of gore, particularly given its subject matter,
but also Fincher’s directorial chutzpah and restraint, as well as the
performances given by its two stars, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as Detectives
David Mills and William Somerset respectively. Pitt’s popularity as a male
pin-up with teenage girls, hardly the target audience for this picture, was
nevertheless cited as the reason for the movie’s runaway success at the box
office. Se7en had the biggest opening weekend of its contemporaries,
held that top spot for 5 weeks thereafter, and, went on to become the seventh
highest-grossing picture of the year.
Retrospectively,
Se7en plays with an uncanny second-sightedness; the unnamed city
depicted in the movie, afflicted with a Blade Runner-esque urban blight
and chronically inclement weather, now to foreshadow the current state of a
good many, once thriving and vibrant American metropolitan city centers, since eroded
into cesspools of human depravity, staggering homelessness and ramped crime. The
descend into purgatory for Det. Mills today, plays to our present-age’s
collective experience, a wounded culture systematically destroyed through
politicized neglect and divisiveness threatening even the tatters of its decaying
social fabric. And the perverted aloofness of the film’s serial killer, John
Doe, realized with a malignant magnificence by actor, Kevin Spacey (himself to suffer
a fall from grace), now, seems even more emblematic of a disturbingly distorted,
prevailing apathy toward anyone who does not think or act as we do.
After all, in an
age where Luigi Mangione’s likeness adorns T-shirts, obscenely as a
justification for the murder of a father of two, reimagined as a folk hero by
some, and scapegoat for others’ dissatisfaction with every system of
governance, is Kevin Spacey’s John Doe, self-prophesizing avenging angel,
railing against mankind’s disintegration, really out of touch with the times?
But, I digress.
What seemed
slightly foreign, if exhilarating in all its neo-noir-based fiction in 1995, now
cruelly parallels the grotesqueness and warped frustrations of our post-modern age,
the six degrees of separation between art and life imperceivably blurred. We
live in the world of Se7en, or rather, have succumbed to its bizarre and
rotting illusions. So, Fincher – tragically – ahead of these terrible tabloid
times, offsets the movie’s dire mire with an ominous elegance; Darius Khondji’s
deep focus, dark cinematography. Khondji’s ability to take rain-soaked and
weather-beaten, steel and concrete exteriors, the urban blight of a bankrupted
downtown core, populated by all manner of inhuman depravity, gets tailored into
a tableau, singed with the fragility of hopeful promise yet to be extinguished.
Curiously, it is the transference of this hopefulness from Mills to Sommerset,
and conversely, the hopelessness cured in Sommerset’s heart, injected into the
unsuspecting Mills, by Se7en’s final reel that assures the audience a
sliver in the thinnest of opportunities for good to still triumph over abject
evil.
For those yet to
experience Fincher’s finely wrought horror in the picture’s last act, I have
abstained from giving away the penultimate moment of cringe-worthy shock and
revile that left me petrified, though strangely, not repulsed in the theater in
1995. In short, if you have yet to see Se7en, you should stop reading
this review now. For the moment of its big reveal is at hand…or rather, in the
implication of that severed head, belonging to Mills’ late wife, Tracy (Gwenyth
Paltrow) who was, at the time of her demise, carrying the couple’s newly
impregnated offspring. Fincher has the cinema sense and good taste not to show
us those remains…only Somerset’s reaction to unearthing them, and then, his
failed intervention to bring Mills to the brutal realization he has lost
everything he once held dear.
Shades of the
real-life Sharon Tate/Charles Manson murders aside, the recognition, that virtue
can ben effortlessly vanquished, is Se7en’s sobering coup de grâce, and,
a real knock-out punch to the conceit of those safely played Hollywood
thrillers from its vintage that usually pull back into something to make the
audience feel more secure about the society they inhabit. Fincher desired no
such denouement for Se7en, and fought New Line on their insistence to shoot
alternative endings that would placate this need to bring the audience back
from the brink of the picture’s otherwise spiraling nightmarish descend into
Dante’s Inferno. We can admire Fincher for his sheer audacity to end what is
already a deeply disturbing, and, inherently bleak crime/thriller on this, a
downbeat so devastating, it easily outclasses the ambiguous finale to The Silence
of the Lambs (1990) in its perversity to see evil win the day. The
aspiration to ascend into a post-modern tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, previously
queried by the Bard with “What’s in a name?” has been answered by
Fincher and his screenwriter, Andrew Kevin Walker with “What’s in the box?”
Se7en debuts in an
unnamed American metropolis, infested with all manner of human delinquency. We
meet careworn police Det. Lt. William Somerset, just one week shy of his retirement.
The seasoned pro is paired with new arrival, Det. David Mills, a hot-blooded idealist
recently moved to the big city with his young wife, Tracy. On Monday, Somerset
and Mills investigate the suspicious death of a grotesque ‘fat man’ (Bob Mack)
forced to eat until his large intestine exploded. Discovering the word ‘gluttony’
scrawled on the wall behind the fridge, Somerset wisely deduces the ritualized
killing is merely one in a spate that will pay a pertinacious homage to the
seven deadly sins. Somerset reverently ask his superior (R. Lee Ermey) to be taken
off the case. Mills, however, is put on another case, the murder of Eli Gould (Gene
Borkan) a prominent criminal attorney found bound and bled to death in his
fashionable downtown office; the word ‘greed’ scrawled in his blood on the
carpet. As these cases are intertwined, Mills and Somerset soon reteam in their
ongoing investigations.
To smooth over
the rough edges in their relationship, Tracy invites Somerset to dinner,
revealing a more human side to his partner. The dinner is a real eye-opener for
both men, and Tracy soon confides in Somerset, she is carrying Mills’ child,
though she has yet to reveal as much to her husband. Tracy fears raising a
child in this decaying city, a grave concern Somerset is only partly successful
at quelling. Meanwhile, a third victim, drug dealer/child abuser, Theodore ‘Victor’
Allen (Michael Reid MacKay) whom Gould liberated at trial, is discovered,
barely alive, chained to his bed in an obscenely emaciated condition.
Somerset reaches
out to his underground contact in the FBI (Mark Boone Junior), to
confidentially provides him with a list of people who have recently checked out
books based on the seven deadly sins. This leads Somerset and Mills to John
Doe's apartment. Unexpectedly, Doe opens fire on them. Mills pursues Doe through
a labyrinth of adjoining rooms leading out into the rain-soaked back alley, but
is subdued by Doe and forced at gunpoint to the ground. Miraculously, Doe does
not execute Mills, leaving him bloodied instead, to be rescued by Somerset. In Doe's
apartment, police discover a large amount of cash from an unknown source, a veritable
library of hand-written notebooks, and, souvenirs Doe has collected from each
of the crime scenes. Seemingly to taunt
detectives, Doe now telephones his apartment, professing his deep, and slightly
homoerotic admiration for Mills.
On Saturday,
Somerset and Mills are called to a seedy brothel to investigate the vial desecration
of a prostitute (Cat Mueller), whose client (Leland Orser) was forced by Doe at
gunpoint to rape her with a custom-made, bladed strap-on until she hemorrhaged
to death. The following day, Doe’s ‘pride’ victim is discovered: a model
(Rachel Slade) whom Doe facially dismembered, knowing that, without her beauty,
she would commit suicide. Presumably at a dead end, Somerset and Mills are
given a gift when Doe willingly arrives at the station, drenched in blood, curiously
to surrender himself to police… with one final request: to have Mills and
Somerset drive him to the scene of his remaining two victims – a place,
otherwise, Mills and Somerset will never find on their own. Begrudgingly, Mills
and Somerset oblige. They are directed from the city to an isolated stretch of deserted
highway where the final depths of Doe’s depravity are revealed. A delivery
truck arrives with a cardboard box.
Having directed
Mills at a distance from the truck, Somerset opens the box to discover Tracy’s severed
head inside. Doe’s end game now becomes painfully clear to Somerset who rushes
back to intercede on the stakeout. Doe reveals to Mills, ‘envy’ as his deadly
sin. He envied Mills. Doe goads Mills to execute him by plying him with the
obscene details of Tracy’s murder, also, inadvertently to reveal he was going
to be a father. Somerset pleads with
Mills to reconsider what killing Doe will do. He will have won this battle of
wills by making Mills his final victim – as Mills’ deadly sin is ‘wrath’. Bereft
of a solitary reason to allow Doe to live, Mills brutally executes his serial
killer, discharging an entire magazine into his corpse. In the aftermath, we
see a thoroughly devastated Mills being driven away in a squad car as Somerset
implores their superior to do everything possible to restore Mills’ sanity. The
story concludes with Somerset’s quote from Hemingway, and, his ambiguous
questioning of whether or not it is true.
Se7en is marginally a
reflection of the urban isolation felt by its screenwriter, Andrew Kevin Walker
who, upon moving from Pennsylvania to New York City in 1986, questioned his
decision, due to its culture shock. “It’s true,” Walker later admitted, “If
I hadn't lived there I probably wouldn't have written Se7en.” Alas,
the apocalyptic world-view permeating the project did not exactly endear itself
to the Hollywood majors. Instead, Italian-based Penta Films optioned the script,
and Walker, having received the absolute minimum for his efforts, nevertheless
uprooted himself yet again, this time to Los Angeles where he continued to reshape
the project at the studio’s behest. Penta’s first choice for director, Jeremiah
S. Chechik, encouraged Walker to write another final act; Walker, returning
with a draft that had Doe murder Mills before being dispatched by Somerset. This was one of 13 drafts considered, all of
which Walker believed betrayed his original vision. When Penta collapsed in 1994,
Se7en was sold to producer, Arnold Kopelson, who wasted no time pitching
it to New Line Cinema. Fincher’s involvement, as yet, seemed unlikely. A
director of MTV-styled music videos, Fincher’s first foray into features, Alien
3 (1992) had been an abysmal experience, creatively eroded by studio
intervention, and a financial flop besides. Yet, it was the quality in Walker’s
writing that convinced Fincher his own creative tastes were closely aligned.
Enamored with
Walker’s original draft, Fincher agreed to direct it, rather than rely on any
of the changes that came afterward. While New Line attempted to convince
Fincher to lighten the piece, in the end, the studio sided with Fincher’s
insistence to remain as faithful as possible to Walker’s original scenario, but
only after Fincher agreed he would not allow the severed head to be shown.
Casting Se7en
was relatively easy. After both Sylvester Stallone and Denzel Washington
rejected the role of Det. Mills, Fincher agreed to meet with Brad Pitt, whom he
had first turned down. Rather fortuitously, Fincher found Pitt to be both congenial
and charismatic, qualities to endear him to this otherwise boastful brat. After
Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, and Al Pacino showed zero interest in the role of
Somerset, Morgan Freeman stepped into the character’s shoes. Briefly, Fincher
considered either Robin Wright or Christina Applegate for the part of Tracy,
before finding precisely the right blend of unspoiled innocence and bright-eyed
intelligence as embodied in Gwenyth Paltrow. Fincher had hoped to lure Ned
Beatty into the part of John Doe. But Beatty was appalled by the screenplay,
while Pitt preferred Kevin Spacey, whose initial salary demands were denied by
the studio before Pitt stepped in to help finesse these negotiations.
Although Fincher
was careful not to pigeon-hole the city in his movie, downtown Los Angeles was used
for exteriors. Rather fortuitously, California experienced an unusual rainy
season, allowing Fincher to further camouflage these decaying cityscapes.
Meanwhile, cinematographer, Darius Khondji took his visual cue from Klute
(1971) another crime/thriller whose heightened sense of realism created a
gritty and desaturated photographic styling, inspired by William Eggleston
and Robert Frank. Again, New Line initially balked at ‘the look’ of Se7en,
as it was a departure from the ‘norm’. And again, Fincher responded by
assembling a show-reel of the dailies that wowed his distributors, effectively
to stifle the studio’s objections. To enhance the overall visual darkness of
the piece, Fincher and Khondji employed a costly and time-consuming ‘bleach
bypass’ chemical process that retained silver content in the original camera
negative. The result was an unsettling luminosity and color saturation, deeper
than normally gleaned from a Kodak negative. Regrettably, not everyone saw Se7en
this way. Of the 2,500 prints struck for theatrical exhibition, only a hundred
or so were actually derived from this chemical process in order to keep
distribution costs down.
Such attention
to detail ultimately costs, and Se7en’s budget eventually ballooned to
nearly $3 million beyond its initial $30 million allotment. To suggest New Line
did not expect much from Se7en is an understatement. The marketing campaign toggled between ‘edgy
prestige’ and the traditional jump/scare-styled horror movie. Ultimately, the
immensity of Brad Pitt’s pubescent female following proved the picture’s
greatest asset. Se7en grossed an impressive $14 million on its opening
weekend, making it the number-one movie in the land, holding onto that top spot
during its second, third, fourth and fifth weeks in general release. By the end
of its run, it had earned $100 million at the box office, making it the 9th
highest grossing movie of 1995 in the U.S. It’s worldwide intake was an even
more impressive $327.3 million, elevating its stature to the
seventh-highest-grossing picture of the year.
Se7en arrives in
native 4K via Warner Home Video. Initially, this release was to have come
almost an entire year earlier, and, in an ultra-deluxe edition weighted in superfluous
swag. For reasons known only to the studio, this plan was ultimately scrapped
for a much streamlined ‘steelbook’ and competing digibook editions – only the
former, containing both a 4K and Blu-ray. Important to note: the Blu in the
steelbook edition has NOT been derived from this new 4K remastering effort but
is, in fact, the old Blu repackaged with no upgrades to image or sound. For
these reasons, only the 4K mastering effort will be discussed from hereon.
Se7en in native 4K
is, in a word, an exemplar of all that the UHD medium is capable of delivering
on home video. Under Fincher’s supervision, the movie has received an 8K scan
off the original camera negative, graded in HDR 10, with no Dolby Vision equivalent.
Every ounce of the picture’s original desaturated color presentation has been
lovingly preserved with minor observances paid to tweaking the overall palette
to now favor a hint of green/grey. Fine details abound, and black levels are
superbly rendered. Fincher has gone back to the drawing board here, massaging
the texture and layering of this image with edge enhancements that can
occasionally seem out of place. But grain has been refined to a finite level
and contrast is stunning, revealing minute details even throughout the darkest
sequences. Se7en’s 5.1 DTS is robust,
derived from original stems reimagined by the film’s sound designer, Ren Klyce.
Internet boards have lit up with condemnation for this ‘down-sampling’ from the
original Blu’s 7.1 lossless audio, as well as to find fault with Warner’s lack of
a proper ‘Atmos’ reimagining. But actually, there are no discernible differences
between the 5.1 in 4K and the 7.1 Blu-ray mix.
Se7en’s goodies are
all imports, and here is the only real shame of this release: that nothing new has
been offered to augment this seminal 90’s thriller. There are 4 separate audio
commentaries, all of them recorded during DVD’s infancy, and featuring Fincher,
Pitt, Freeman, and a host of behind-the-scenes collaborators. There are also
two ways to view deleted scenes, either with or without Fincher’s commentary,
plus, a stills gallery, and featurette devoted to production design, and, a
nearly half-hour featurette discussing how Se7en was mastered for DVD
(which seems idiotic, given the 4K upgrade, and no featurette to explain precisely
how it was achieved). Bottom line: Se7en was always an unusually ‘special’
film, made by an industry increasingly hellbent on homogenizing the creative process
to the nth degree. Warner should have produced at least a retrospective on the ‘making
of’ that offered reflections on its longevity and legacy. That aside, it is
very hard to argue with the quality of this mastering effort. It’s sublime.
Very highly recommended.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
4.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS
1
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