Spockvarietyhour: cinephiliabeyond: Despite the fact Se7en is...

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Despite the fact Se7en is elevated by supreme acting performances and Fincher’s masterful direction which builds up the tension, as well as expert storytelling, where the filmmaker manages to almost effortlessly disgust and disturb us with only a single murder actually occurring on screen (and, as all of you who’ve seen the film know, this killing is all but gruesome), what makes Se7en one of our favorites is the way the location of the plot plays a crucial role in the story as a whole. The setting, a purposefully unnamed metropolis immersed into darkness and drenched in constant, relentless drizzle, is just as vivid a character in this film as are the detectives or the serial killer. The overall bleakness of the huge city superbly connects with the notions of moral decay and the complete indifference of the society. This leads us to the other reason Se7en is so loved here at C&B: the character of John Doe, whose screen time is disproportional to his overall significance for the story. The sadistic murderer portrayed brilliantly subtly by Kevin Spacey is a brutal, uncompromising but highly intelligent and placid man who voluntarily takes on the assignment of purging the city of sin, carrying out a number of hideous killings as if they are the integral part of a mission handed to him by God of the Old Testament: unforgiving, merciless, eager to teach humanity a lesson. In some way, the whole weight of the film lies on Spacey’s shoulders, and had a lesser actor been given this kind of a responsibility, Se7en would have probably crumbled to pieces.