Crime Drama - Se7en

The last genre I looked at was crime drama. Crime drama was difficult for me to chose, because there are so many television shows and films in this day and age that comes under this genre. However in the end I chose the film Seven (Or sometimes written as Se7en.)

The story is about two detectives played by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. Who are uncovering some murders that have been done in the style (and not to mention they are also morbidly creative) of the seven deadly sins. The movie is very complex and there is a lot of development but the main idea is the detectives trying to catch the killer, John Doe, played amazingly by Kevin Spacey.

I have added two clips of this film as you can see below. However I found it difficult to just chose small clips from Youtube and talk about them. As the movie has so many elements. To get my analysis right, I actually watched the whole film and most of my analysis will be examples from when I watched the film.

Narrative Structure

The first thing is where to start. This film has so much narrative structure. It is not just the way the characters connect. But it's also how the story connects, the different sections of the story.

Primarily I felt like the film was put into these two sections. The first part of the film I felt was the murders. Uncovering them, finding out who did them and understanding the murders visually. For example, the infamous 'Sloth' murder was having someone tied to a bed for a year and fiendishly calling him lazy. I felt the second half of the film was getting closer into the characters, especially the murderer John Doe, his reason for committing his crimes (as you can hear briefly in the first clip) and how what he does and the murders tie in with the characters of Freeman and Pitt (no spoilers!). I felt like this was the overall Narrative structure to the film. But of course there was more within that.

The film does not really push forwards and back and forwards and back. It goes through like a straight timeline. In the beginning they are on the case and at the end they have came to a conclusion and finished the case. The crime genre is known to have equilibriums and dis equilibriums and  elements like that. Crime is known to also be a very twisty and turning type of genre. This film has these elements. But honestly in this film nothing turns good. And also the detectives, like said above come to an conclusion they never really resolve their feelings to everything that has happened, even if it meant winning. 

The ending also uses lots of conventions. It has an ending that could be explained as open but is also realativly closed. It feels open from Freeman's last line which is in fact 'I'll be around.' and you think, well what could this mean? how is he feeling? what happens next? However it is closed because we find out the secrets and we find out the meanings of things that were questioned in the beginning of the film. The film also ends with a voice over of Freeman's character, quoting Earnest Hemingway. I feel like voice overs are a great way to conclude a film. Sometimes they connect to the film. Other times they bring out a strong emotion to a film. 

Technical Aspects.

I love the technical aspects of this film. One of the reasons I used those two clips was to talk about the lighting. The first clip is shot outside in a car, so of course the lighting is bright. And the second clip is shown in a bar. Bars can sometimes be dark and dismal. So we have that element of a dark and dismal bar. But these contrasts are also super superb in the way that there is somewhat a type of angst in both scenes. And respective of what is going on, the lighting seems to work with both types of scenes.

The ending of the film is shot outside too. I love the shots they use at the ending of the film.

They do a lot of back and fourth close up shots to get characters reactions and the events that happen at the end of the movie. There are also high shots, far shots and they are all done super quickly.

They connect to the music in the scene. The music is kind of the orchestral, dramatic type of music that we see in lots of films. The thing I find amazing about the use of music in this ending is that the characters talk over the music. They still carry out the conversation. In my opinion this is a great use of script work. But also when it comes to the context on the film it makes you sit further to the edge of your seat. This film overall is very clever.