Seven Analysis

Seven Is a psychological thriller starring Brad Pitt as Detective Mills and Morgan Freeman as Detective Lutenant William Somerset. As the movie opens he is wearing very formal clothing which makes us automatically realise that he is of high authority and has high standards. He then goes on to pick up the objects in his order, showing he likes things done his way and in order. This could make us feel that he is going to be difficult and pottentioally stubborn. He is shown at the very start of the movie to help us interact with him and understand that he is going to be the main character and has a quest to be undertaken; this is very conventional of a thriller.

Very earlier in the movie we realise what the movie is going to be about, after 54 seconds we see a clip of a dead person, bringing mystery but also piecing together what Morgan Freeman’s character does for a living. In my opinion this is unconventional for a thriller as we do not see the deaths, no fast straight cuts or music to build tension, it is almost like the movie has started and Morgan Freemans character has to catch up, catching the murderer. We are immediately focused on the body due to the cameras angle being high angled; it is also a mid-shot with the correct lighting to draw our attention to the body. This shot also works well as we have just gone from Morgan Freemans nice clean, pristine, everything in order to this house with a murdered body in.

As Brad Pitt’s character Detective David Mills is brought onto the scene we realise how different he and Morgan Freeman’s characters are going to be, and that it has the potential to be a unconventional thriller in the sense that the two characters are going to clash. You can tell via appearance that they are very different people, Mills is very scruffy and almost not experienced as William Somerset. It is both unconventional for the reasons discussed but then I feel that it is conventional as whether they like it or not, fall out or get on, they are going to be solving a mystery together.

As the day closes and William Somerset is in bed we get an extreme close up of his metronome, this could represent many different things, depends how you want to interpret it, I feel that it shows time ticking away maybe on his life or his job.