David Fincher’s Masterpiece Se7en Gets a Remaster

Tonight at the TCM Film Festival, David Fincher’s Se7en will screen in 8K on IMAX:

SE7EN (1995) was filmed in 35mm and released in 2.39 aspect ratio. Motion Picture Imaging scanned the original camera negative in 8k with all restoration work completed by David Fincher’s post-production team in 8k. Color by Eric Weidt. The original 5.1 sound elements were restored by Ren Klyce creating a new 5.1 mix.

It’s hard to believe a perfect film could get even more perfect. For lucky attendees of the TCM Fest, they’ll have the chance tonight to see it restored to loving detail:

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Fincher talked about the restoration:

“On a 100-inch screen, you’ll look at it and go, ‘What the fuck? They only had money for white cardboard out there?’ So that’s the kind of stuff on print stock, it just gets blown out of being there. And now you’re looking at it, going ‘I can see, you know, 500 nits of what the fuck.’”

And he talks with Joshua Rothkopf in the LA Times:

Then I had a meeting with Brad. I called my great friend and partner at Propaganda, Dominic Sena, who had directed him in “Kalifornia.” And I said, “Tell me about this Brad Pitt guy.” And he said, “You’re going to love him — so much fun, so honest, so on it. He only wants to do stuff that’s interesting.” So we met at a coffee shop and out of that, a deal was imminent. I think it was within 48 hours, they closed that. And then [producer] Arnold Kopelson called me and said, “What do you think about Morgan Freeman?” I had a phone conversation with Morgan and he said, “I would love to be in this.” And I said, “Really? There’s a lot of night shooting.”

Se7en is one of the best films ever made, and it was one of the best films David Fincher had ever made. It was a monster hit. According to Box Office Mojo, it made around $33 million and brought in $100 million domestically and $327 million worldwide. Released in 1995, it caught the wave of Brad Pitt/Gwyneth Paltrow mania, even if her head did end up in the box. But to me, Se7en has taken its place in cinema history alongside No Country for Old Men as a rumination on the human condition as seen through the eyes of opposing points of view.

I have watched the film almost as many times as I have watched The Social Network, Panic Room, Gone Girl, Zodiac and yes, The Game and Benjamin Button. These movies do not age. They somehow hold their place the same way films by Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock do. That’s because Fincher manages to invent an entirely different reality for his movies, one that isn’t necessarily found in the modern world.

Se7en is a violent film with no violence in it. The violence happens off-camera, but when you think of the movie, you see the giant metallic dildo, Kevin Spacey’s bloody arms, and, yes, we all can imagine Gwyneth’s head in the box. But we never see it. That is the power of this film. Fincher makes us imagine it, and the horror is ten times greater.

What I love most about Se7en, though, isn’t that. But like Panic Room and Zodiac, it’s hard not to notice the sheer brilliance behind the camera. Still, Se7en takes me deeper into the human psyche. I so identify with the Morgan Freeman character, a jaded cop who stopped believing in heroes paired up with a green, reactive newbie in Brad Pitt. By the movie’s end, everything he once believed in, the good he saw in people, and the hope he had for the future is gone.

All three of the central performances are among the best of their careers. Brad Pitt has never been better as the idealistic, impulsive detective on a path to personal and professional ruin due to his arrogance. Morgan Freeman is great as lamenting the enduring tragedy of the human condition.

But it’s really Kevin Spacey who steals this movie, at least to me. Go ahead and banish him all you want, but the man is a brilliant actor in some ways unmatched by any of his contemporaries, with John Doe in Se7en right at the top of that list. Yet, Spacey was never that actor who could only play one kind of role. He could shapeshift into so many different incarnations — but really, he was at his best as a villain, from Se7en all the way up to House of Cards. He’s also brilliant in Glengarry Glen Ross as Williamson and the two performances that earned him his Oscars – American Beauty and The Usual Suspects.

In Se7en, John Doe is arrogant enough to believe he is enacting a form of justice on humanity, punishing people for their seven deadly sins. The film is back-loaded, it gets better as it goes along, and builds suspense in a way only a master of the form really can. There aren’t many directors working today — or ever — who are as good at tension as Fincher. The scene in the back of the police car with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman heading out to the desert where poor Brad Pitt will find out the fate of his dear wife, and oh yeah, she’s pregnant.

Fincher must have known he hit the jackpot with an actor like that, who can hammer each line with such precision. What makes Se7en so disturbing is what it says about us, the viewer. We’re as disgusted by the victims selected by John Doe as he is. The difference is that we don’t act on it. Still, it makes us feel uncomfortable because the victims aren’t exactly sympathetic. They’re repulsive. Finding a way to care about humanity is what courses through this film like battery acid. It is so easy not to care, as Morgan Freeman says in another great scene:

One of the best scenes in Se7en is the first confrontation between Mills and John Doe. It’s clear Mills is outmatched in every way, but he shows mercy when his life could have ended then and there. The scene is memorable not just because of what he’s up against but also because of the dazzling filmmaking with Mills flying after a mostly unseen Doe.

Mills is young enough and naive enough that he still believes in the goodness of humanity. It hasn’t been taken from him yet, which might explain his arrogance in confronting John Doe, a serial killer who is smarter than he is by a mile. This dynamic is explored in the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men almost a decade later, with the same kind of naive man attempting to outrun the same kind of evil and is once again outmatched.

The Tommy Lee Jones character is similar to the Morgan Freeman character – the older, wiser man who can’t protect the younger man from deep, dark evil. In No Country, they are outrunning death (you can’t stop what’s coming). In Se7en, Mills is about to have his soul amputated when everything he believes in is taken away in one horrific scene – among the greatest in all of film history.

The whole thing takes place in five minutes:

Everything about this scene is perfection. The acting, the setting, the music, the pacing. That great shot of the sun behind Spacey’s head. How the word “Tracy” pierces the reality of the scene like an unwelcome invader. As Mills tries to make sense of it all, as his impulsive nature is exploited, as Somerset tries so hard to keep Mills from making a mistake that will destroy his life we watch the inevitable events unfold, unable to stop him ourselves, if only we could.

And all at once, the film defeats our humanity because finally, there is a sin we ourselves would commit a thousand times over. There isn’t a person alive who would not do what Mills does to John Doe at the end. So what does that make us? Sinful, flawed, human.

There is not a minute in Se7en that feels like it was made in 1995 and not yesterday, except for the fact that it’s so great and they don’t make ’em like they used to. Well, except for this director.

David Fincher’s films never get old. They are never trapped in their time, outdated as new generations come of age. They remain like buried treasures, waiting for future generations to unearth them. As they watch them they’ll start to notice Fincher’s signature moves, like the opening credits, the exacting directing, and his willingness to collaborate with strong writers like Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en and The Killer).

But like Hitchcock movies, Fincher’s films never seem to get the recognition they deserve in their time. The Oscars ignored Gone Girl, just like they ignored Zodiac, Fight Club, and Se7en. Yet, time doesn’t forget his films. Of all of the movies released in 2014 Gone Girl is the only film people still watch and talk about.

I look forward to seeing the 8K version of Se7en but I also know that my well-worn copy is every bit as brilliant as the spit-shined version. Why, because what makes this movie great is about the acting, the cinematography, the writing and the magnificent directing. If it’s a little easier on the eye, all the better.

Here are some video essays on Fincher and Se7en: