October 09, 2019

A perfect pairing of sound & vision - Se7en. Researching into the night.


A serial killer is terrorising a city and he's using the seven deadly sins as inspiration. An obese man has been force fed to death (gluttony). A prostitute has been murdered with a razor sharp sex toy (lust). A lawyer has been bled slowly (greed). A child abuser has been tied to a bed, starved and tortured over the course of a year (sloth). There's uproar and Detective Somerset and Detective Mills are on the case before another person dies. Somerset sets out to do some research on the beliefs of the killer and the best place to find some peace and quiet is the city library at night.

 

A truly serene moment in the middle of a nightmare. The juxtaposition of beautiful music with horrific crime scene photo's and terrifying biblical imagery that makes the music even more soothing and the pictures even scarier. I love the way the security guard turns Somerset's and the audience's own snobbery on it's head with one cool as fuck line - "How's this for culture."  Johann Sebastian Bach's Air On A G String. Superb.

Not only is it a perfect pairing of sound and vision but its also a scene that moves the story forward. So many musical moments in films stop the action dead but here we get to see actual detecting being done and we get a sense of how committed Mills and Somerset are to their work. Note the subtle foreshadowing of the ending too. Gwyneth Paltrow's Tracey, looking concerned as she watches her husband working into the night. Pictured between 2 frames of her window, it looks like her head is in a ........ I'll say no more in case you haven't seen the ending.


Previous pairings

Mad Men
The Colour Of Money
Rules Of Attraction
Kickboxer                                  
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