The Tree of Life

Decades in the making, the gestation period of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011) is as epic as the film itself. After Days of Heaven (1978) was released to critical acclaim and nominated for four Academy Awards, Paramount, the studio that backed it, offered the director a million dollars for his next project regardless of its subject matter. Despite being burnt out from making and editing Days, he agreed. Malick had been contemplating his most ambitious film yet: the creation of our galaxy and the Earth as well as the beginnings of life on our planet. It was originally called Qasida (a reference to an ancient Arabian form of rhythmic lyric poetry) and eventually shortened to Q. In 1979, Malick and a small crew began shooting footage in exotic locales all over the world. The footage they were getting looked great but Paramount was nervous about the absence of a screenplay (Malick would write 40-page poetic descriptions of the imagery) and a structured shooting schedule. Eventually, the studio lost patience with the director’s methods and he not only quit the project but the movie business for 20 years.


The first signs that Malick was returning to his Q project came during pre-production on The New World (2005) when producer Sarah Green received a revised treatment for what would become The Tree of Life. By July 2007, there was a script that fused the cosmic nature of Q with a semi-autobiographical story that focused on a Texas family in the 1950’s as seen through the eyes of the oldest child Jack (Hunter McCracken as a child and Sean Penn as an adult). As early as Days of Heaven, Malick had been moving away from linear narratives to a more philosophical tone poem approach. With The Thin Red Line (1998), he began to explore in greater detail man’s relationship with his environment and with the Earth. This continued with The New World, which embraced a non-linear narrative more than anything he had done before. The Tree of Life is the culmination of Malick’s body of work so far.

The film begins with the death of one of the O’Brien children. The mother (Jessica Chastain) is understandably devastated while the father (Brad Pitt) is stoic but eventually the cracks begin to show and he also grieves in his own way. Cut to the present day and Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) is an architect, unhappy and adrift in the world, still haunted by the death of his brother. The film flashes back to his reminisces of his childhood in the ‘50s. In this first section, Malick cuts back and forth between the impersonal concrete and glass jungle of the big city in which Jack works and the idyllic suburban neighborhood of his youth.

Early on in the film, the mother says in a disembodied voiceover, “There are two ways through life: the way of nature, and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.” I believe that this passage is integral to understanding Malick’s film and it becomes apparent that the mother represents Grace, accepting insults and injuries, while the father represents nature, lording over his family.

Right from the get-go, Malick dispenses with the traditional notion of how a scene is structured and linked to another in favor of an impressionistic approach. This is no more apparent then when the narrative segues to an extraordinary sequence depicting the creation of our galaxy and the Earth with absolutely breathtaking imagery – a stunning mix of unusual practical effects (created by Dan Glass and the legendary Douglas Trumbull) and actual footage courtesy of NASA. With this sequence we are entering Stanley Kubrick territory. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Malick mixes science with spirituality, the cosmic and the ethereal, occasionally commented on via existential voiceover musings about God by the mother. He actually shows the Earth forming and early life being created on the most basic cellular level on up to the dinosaurs. This sequence and its placement so early on in the film is just one of the audacious choices Malick makes.

The film then goes back to early stages of the O’Brien family, to the creation of their children, the painful and glorious experience of childbirth, much like that of the Earth itself. Malick presents two approaches to parenting: the mother is a nurturing figure while the father is a stern disciplinarian. She is in tune with nature while he represents structure. It is this part of the film that is the most engaging as we are presented with familiar, relatable imagery: a very young boy gazes in wonderment and then jealousy at his baby sibling; the shadows of tree branches playing across a wall; the family playing with sparklers at night; kids playing in tall grass; and a tree-lined suburb at dusk with the sky the most amazing shade of purple-blue. These are the innocent, carefree days when you had no worries and would spend hours playing with other children until called in by your mother for the night. Malick has come full circle by returning to the same tranquil Texas suburbs first glimpsed at the beginning of Badlands (1973), his debut feature. These scenes will be instantly familiar to anyone who grew up in the suburbs or a rural environment.

As he did with Linda Manz in Days of Heaven, Malick demonstrates an incredible affinity for working with children and pulling naturalistic performances out of them. All of the kids, especially newcomer Hunter McCracken, act very comfortable in front of the camera, almost as if Malick caught them unaware that they were being filmed. McCracken has a very expressive face, which he utilizes well over the course of the film as Jack becomes increasingly rebellious, testing the rules imposed by his father. Malick documents the children’s behavior and all of their idiosyncrasies, like how they interact with each other and how this differs with their interaction with adults, especially in the ‘50s when they were much more respectful. Much of the film is seen from a child’s point-of-view with low angle shots that look up at adults, trees, and so on. It’s only in the scenes with other children that the camera takes a more level position.

At one point, the father tells Jack that his mother is naïve and that “It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world.” Brad Pitt doesn’t play the stereotypical strict father figure but one with layers that are gradually revealed through the course of the film. He works in a factory, a labrinythian maze of metal machinery but we learn that he wanted to originally be a musician but it didn’t work out. He had to become responsible and lead a more traditional life in order to provide for his family. He still plays piano and passes this ability on to his children. Pitt delivers an excellent performance that grounds the film. The actor has aged well and grown into his looks, relying less and less on them as he gets older. There is a nice scene where he accompanies one of his sons playing an acoustic guitar with the piano that is brief but does a lot to humanize his character. The mother, in comparison, is a more elusive character, more of an ethereal figure as played by Jessica Chastain.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of The Tree of Life is how it may be Malick’s most personal film to date. The parallels between him and Jack are quite striking. Malick also grew up in Texas during the ‘50s and was the eldest of three sons. Like Jack, Malick was known for his “precocious” behavior growing up. Most strikingly, the director had a younger brother who died. Larry was an accomplished guitarist studying in Spain. At one point he had an accident that damaged his hands and became quite upset over his studies. Their father asked Malick to go to Spain to be with his brother but Malick refused. Larry committed suicide and Malick has felt guilty about it ever since. Is this film a way of the director dealing with the loss of his brother after all these years?

You simply cannot engage The Tree of Life in a traditional way. The first section is a little impenetrable at first as one has to leave the concept of traditional narrative behind and get acclimatized to Malick’s approach. One has to let the film wash over you and let his poetic imagery work its magic. Like all of his films, this is one that people will either passionately love or hate because of its ambitious, unusual approach. It will be seen as pretentious by some but any film that strives to tackle big themes like life and death and what it means to be human on such an epic (and also intimate) scale runs that risk. What prevents it from collapsing under its own thematic weight is Malick’s sincerity. He really believes in what he is showing us and treats it with the solemnity and weight it deserves. The Tree of Life has the kind of lofty ambitions most films only dream of reaching and it is easy to see why it is being compared to 2001. Like that film, Malick’s will undoubtedly reveal more upon repeated viewings. There is just so much to absorb that one viewing is not enough because you are too busy trying to make sense of what all this breathtaking imagery means. It will take repeated viewings to fully appreciate what Malick is trying to do and say. This is an important film by a master filmmaker.


Further reading:

New York magazine takes a fantastic look at the decades in the making history of the film.

So does the Los Angeles Times.

A fascinating interview with the film's cinematographer.

A decent primer on Malick's life and career.

Salon.com has a posted a fantastic guide to understanding (comprehending?) this film. A must-read for anyone who admires or was confounded by it.

Ocean's Thirteen

Despite its impressive box office returns, Ocean’s Twelve (2004) was considered something of a disappointment by its director Steven Soderbergh who felt that the plot was too complicated. While not quite as fun as Ocean’s Eleven (2001), it was a fine film in its own right – one that had a more satisfying emotional pay-off and doesn’t deserve the lousy reputation that it seems to have. Ocean’s Thirteen (2007) was seen as a return to the fun, breezy vibe of the first film by bringing it back to Las Vegas with style. The result was a very satisfying conclusion to the Ocean’s films.

As the revenge picture cliché goes, this time it’s personal. When Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould) is muscled out of a business deal by slick businessman Willy Bank (Al Pacino), resulting in a heart attack, Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his crew reunite for one last job: to ruin the opening night of Bank’s casino, The Bank, by making sure he loses a huge amount of money, which involves rigging all the games and slot machines. Bank wants the Five Diamond Award – the top accolade for hotels and will do anything to get it. Danny and the boys use this as a way to get at Bank. To this end, they devise an elaborate plan with the help of their arch-nemesis Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) who bankrolls the operation. They also bring in Roman Nagel (Eddie Izzard) from Ocean’s Twelve to crack a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence security system.

Soderbergh kicks things off rather stylishly as we get a beautiful shot of Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt) walking across a runaway tarmac to an awaiting plane at dusk with the sky an impossibly deep dark blue that, accompanied by David Holmes’ groovy score, is absolutely breathtaking. Once again, the director shoots the hell out of the film by employing all sorts of zoom ins and outs, pans and split-screens that, along with a saturated color scheme, keeps things visually interesting.

This time out, Matt Damon gets a juicy subplot where he goes undercover as Lenny Pepperidge, the assistant to a Mr. Weng (Shaobo Qin as The Amazing Yen, also undercover), a very high roller, in order to get close to Bank’s lovely assistant, Abigail Sponder (Ellen Barkin). Part of his disguise involves wearing a ridiculous fake long nose – a sly fuck you to Harvey Weinstein who wouldn’t let Damon wear said nose for his character in Terry Gilliam’s The Brother’s Grimm (2005) because he felt it would obscure the actor’s good looks and hurt the film’s box office potential. Well, it didn’t hurt Ocean’s Thirteen box office as the film went on to gross a very respectable $311 million worldwide.

It is also a lot of fun to see Ellen Barkin reunited with her Sea of Love (1989) co-star Al Pacino. She appears to be having a good time playing a confident businesswoman succumbing to Damon’s “seductive” charms. It is also fun to see Pacino go off autopilot for a change and sink his teeth into a juicy bad guy role. Who else could Soderbergh get to pose as a credible threat to the likes of George Clooney and Brad Pitt but someone of the legendary star caliber like Pacino? He plays Bank like the offspring of his take on Ricky Roma from Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and Gordon Gekko from Wall Street (1987) – a smooth-talking unscrupulous bastard. In another nice bit of casting, the inventor of the artificial intelligence security system is played by none other than Julian Sands, an actor whose big break through came in A Room with A View (1985) but whose career settled into mostly direct-to-home video fare so it was a pleasant surprise to see him appear in a big mainstream film like Ocean’s Thirteen.

Another amusing subplot involves Virgil Malloy (Casey Affleck, sporting a ridiculous-looking mustache) organizing a revolution/strike among the workers at a dice-making factory in Mexico. He goes from complaining about a lack of air conditioning to tossing Molotov cocktails on the strike lines. At one point, he and his fellow co-workers drown their sorrows at a local bar and Virgil asks them, “Have all of you forgotten Zapata?” He goes on to offer inspirational words that fire them up. How this whole subplot plays out is quite funny. In another nice twist, Terry Benedict is helping Danny out albeit with all kinds of conditions. After all, he resents Bank’s lack of taste and the competition he represents. There can only be on top dog in Vegas and Benedict clearly feels that he is the one. Andy Garcia looks like he relished the opportunity to be in on the joke instead of being the target as he was in the last two films.

While working on Ocean’s Twelve, Steven Soderbergh began thinking about Ocean’s Thirteen. He thought about how fun it would be to set it back in Las Vegas. The motivation to make the film was a desire to work with everyone again but all eleven cast members had to want to do it. Producer Jerry Weintraub contacted them 18 months before hand and told them filming would take place during the summer of 2006 and to clear their schedules. He was able to find a way to juggle all these movie stars’ busy lives and add Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin into the mix.

For the film’s story, Soderbergh felt that Danny and his crew weren’t driven entirely by money and that they would reunite for friendship and revenge. The director came up with the notion of Reuben being betrayed and his friends helping him out. Weintraub hired Brian Koppelman and David Levien to write the screenplay. They had written the script for Rounders (1998) and created the gambling television cable show Tilt, and so they were familiar with the world of con men and gamblers. Soderbergh and Weintraub were both big admirers of Rounders and the director met with the screenwriters in New York City over lunch. They talked about great con movies, the nature of heists, and how the characters had evolved since Ocean’s Eleven. Within minutes, Soderbergh knew they were who he wanted to write the script and were working on it within minutes: “There was not a long list of people that we thought could step into this specific universe and pick up the language and the sense of humor.”

Koppelman and Levien had spent years exploring Vegas culture and the gambling lifestyle. They had every book they could find about con artists and thieves. Early on, Soderbergh told them that he wanted the film’s focus to be on the friendship between Danny and his crew. They understood that getting revenge on Willy Bank was what drove the entire story of Ocean’s Thirteen. They also wanted to “’flip’ the casino so that the patrons would win every time, which would spell disaster for Bank.” Soderbergh also told them that the bad guy should be a casino owner and they imagined Al Pacino and wrote Bank with him in mind. George Clooney also offered some ideas, mostly things to do with the revenge scheme that reunited the crew.

Some exterior scenes were shot in Las Vegas, but the casino interiors were mostly shot on one of the largest soundstages on the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles because it would have taken too long to film in actual casinos as they had done with Ocean’s Eleven. Soderbergh said, “In order to get the shots that I wanted, I needed to completely control the environment.” He instructed production designer Philip Messina to build a hotel and casino that would reflect Bank and his huge ego. Messina decided to go with a quasi-Asian theme and make it visually overwhelming. He purposely broke the rules in Vegas by designing a multi-level gaming floor because the production didn’t have a lot of horizontal space to work with.

Much like with Ocean’s Twelve, Ocean’s Thirteen received mixed reviews from critics. In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis praised Soderbergh’s direction: “Playing inside the box and out, he has learned to go against the grain while also going with the flow. In Ocean’s Thirteen he proves that in spades by using color like Kandinsky and hanging a funny mustache on Mr. Clooney’s luscious mug, having become a genius of the system he so often resists.” USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and Claudia Puig wrote, “As escapist entertainments go, Thirteen is far from unlucky: It's breezy, clever fun and ridiculously easy on the eyes.” The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “Predictably adolescent and smarmy, with the mix of sentimentality and cynical flippancy that's becoming Steven Soderbergh's specialty (even when he's pretending to make art films), this is chewing gum for the eyes and ears, and not bad as such.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turn felt that it was better than Ocean’s Twelve but not as good as Eleven: “Though it's certainly serviceable as the second sequel to a remake, it lacks the brio and élan that made the 2001 film such a treat.”

On the other hand, Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, “Ocean's Thirteen proceeds with insouciant dialogue, studied casualness, and a lotta stuff happening, none of which I cared much about because the movie doesn't pause to develop the characters, who are forced to make do with their movie-star personas.” In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, “for long stretches of the proceedings, Mr. Soderbergh seems to be trying to distract us from the suspenseless inevitability of the plot with semi-abstract rainbowish splashes of color.” Finally, the Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter wrote, “It's maybe halfway between okay and not bad. If being about average were a sin, it'd be headed straight to Hell on a bobsled.”

Like Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Thirteen pays tribute to the classic era of Vegas as Danny and co. restore Reuben’s honor. He’s an old school player who still believes in following a code and prides himself in being part of a select group of insiders that got to shake Frank Sinatra’s hand back in the day. Like Benedict, Bank represents the current corporate mentality of making money over the personal touch that the Mob-run casinos used to provide. If the first two films were about Danny and Rusty’s respective relationships with the loves of their lives, then Ocean’s Thirteen is about their friendship with Reuben. He mentored them when they were just starting out and taught them about respecting history as well as those who came before them. Like with the previous films, going after the bad guy is a matter of personal honor and hitting them where it hurts – in Bank’s case it’s his monster ego. Ocean’s Thirteen ends much like Ocean’s Eleven did thus bringing the trilogy full circle and with a truly satisfying conclusion as the bad guy gets what’s coming to him and Reuben’s honor is restored. Likewise, the film did very well at the box office and garnered fairly positive reviews going out on a well-deserved high note. It serves as an example of a star-studded big budget Hollywood film that entertains without insulting your intelligence.

Ocean's Twelve

After the commercial failures of Full Frontal and Solaris in 2002, there was pressure on Steven Soderbergh, when he announced that his next film was to be the sequel to the wildly successful Ocean’s Eleven (2001), to not only come up with a box office hit but to also outperform the previous film. With big budget, star-studded casts like the one in Ocean’s Twelve (2004), there is always the danger of having them look too smug and self-indulgent instead of having fun along with the audience. Ocean’s Eleven managed to straddle this line quite well, resulting in an entertaining popcorn movie. Soderbergh kept his cast in check, never letting them go too far over-the-top and shooting it with a style that was always interesting to watch. The big question for the sequel was if he could pull off the same feat without repeating himself too much. Ocean’s Twelve ended making less than its predecessor (but still a lot of money) and cost more while also dividing critics but in some ways I find it a better film.

Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is supposed to be retired and enjoying domestic bliss with Tess (Julia Roberts). However, old habits die-hard and the lure of pulling heists is always calling. She catches him casing a jewelry story on their anniversary. To make matters worse, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) is still hot on their trail, tracking down all of the original eleven and letting them know, in his own casually menacing way, that he wants the $160 million, plus interest, that they stole from him in Ocean’s Eleven, and in two weeks time. The montage of him doing this mirrors the one in the first film where Danny and Rusty recruited their crew. If Benedict was an imposing figure in the first film, Andy Garcia makes him even more of a threatening presence in this montage by doing little except exude menace with his eyes and the all-business tone of his voice.

So, Danny gets everybody back together to figure out what to do. Obviously, they need to pull another job but they are too high profile in the United States, so they go to Europe and cross paths with a truly formidable opponent and rival master thief known as the Night Fox (Vincent Cassel), a bored French playboy. He’s jealous of Danny’s status as the world’s greatest thief and is out to prove that he’s the best by having the both of them go after the same thing: the Faberge Imperial Coronation egg. Vincent Cassel plays the Night Fox as an ultra-confident, cocky man in such a way that you want to see Danny and company knock him down a peg.

Ocean’s Twelve ups the difficulty level for our heroes even more by having most of the crew neutralized leaving only Basher (Don Cheadle), Linus (Matt Damon) and Virgil (Scott Caan) left to pull off an impossible heist. So, they bring in Tess to pose as, well, Julia Roberts. Unfortunately, another major movie star is staying at the same hotel, which only adds to the meta aspect. Said movie star gamely plays a fictional version of himself. The scene where he meets Tess as Julia Roberts is very amusing as Damon and Roberts act all star-struck in front of him. It is also interesting in that the meta aspect that was present in Ocean’s Eleven is made even more explicit – something that turned off some critics and audiences but I think works extremely well because Soderbergh isn’t having a cutesy cameo of a movie star for the sake of it but actually incorporating them into the plot and making them an integral part of the scam.

If the first film was about Danny’s redemption by reconciling with Tess, then Ocean’s Twelve is about Rusty’s (Brad Pitt) redemption by reconciling with his past love, Isabel Lahiri (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a determined and quite beautiful Interpol agent. Like Danny’s feelings for Tess potentially compromising his involvement in the heist in Ocean’s Eleven, Rusty’s feelings for Isabel leaves him potentially vulnerable in Ocean’s Twelve. To her credit, Catherine Zeta-Jones fits right in with the European vibe, maintaining just the right mix of determination in nailing Danny and his crew and vulnerability when she’s with Rusty. Their relationship elevates the film ever so slightly above the standard heist story and the conclusion of her subplot is surprisingly emotional and poignant – the highpoint of the trilogy and something you don’t expect from a film like Ocean’s Twelve, which is essentially a feature-length lark.

Matt Damon demonstrates excellent comic timing in this film and is the real stand-out of this strong cast. Early on, Linus asks Rusty if he could have more to do this time out and this moment comes across as quite self-reflexive. It’s as if Damon were almost asking if he could have more screen time in the film itself. In some respects, he is the group’s stammering conscience. There is an amusing scene where Linus, Danny and Rusty meet a contact by the name of Matsui (Robbie Coltrane) for a potential job. Danny, Rusty and Matsui all speak cryptically which leaves poor Linus totally confused. Damon plays the scene so well as he looks desperately to his cohorts for help or some sort of clue as to what he should say. Put on the spot, Linus finally responds by quoting lyrics from “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin to hilarious effect.

While doing a press conference in Rome during the promotional tour for Ocean’s Eleven, Steven Soderbergh fell in love with the city and over dinner with producer Jerry Weintraub began thinking about the story and structure for a sequel. He got the idea to set it in Europe and was so inspired that he started writing down ideas. After returning to Los Angeles, Weintraub discovered George Nolfi’s screenplay, entitled Honor Among Thieves, about the greatest thief in America going up against his equal in Europe. It was originally developed for John Woo to direct but Weintraub sent the script to George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Soderbergh. The director came up with the basic idea for the film and thought that it “would be more fun if Twelve was the movie in which everything goes wrong from the get-go.” He ended up merging Nolfi’s script with his own ideas. Soderbergh saw this film as more emotional, character-driven and complicated on a narrative level than the first one.

Prior to the start of principal photography, which lasted 77 days, Julia Roberts found out that she was pregnant and Soderbergh incorporated it into the script. He also met with Vincent Cassel at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival and asked the actor if he would be interested in being in Ocean’s Twelve. He agreed without reading the script because he trusted someone with a reputation like Soderbergh’s. Once filming began, the production spent ten weeks globetrotting all over the world with stops in Chicago, Amsterdam, Paris, Monte Carlo, Lake Cuomo, and Rome. Principal photography concluded with four weeks on three Warner Brothers soundstages in L.A.

Not surprisingly, Ocean’s Twelve received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “The movie is all about behavior, dialogue, star power and wiseass in-jokes. I really sort of liked it.” In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, “Ocean's Twelve may be slim pickings, but when a film contains a bit as sublime as Rusty putting the moves on a visibly startled Isabel while he's literally hotfooting it from the law it's the kind of movie moment that can tide you over for a week.” The Washington Post’s Desson Thomson wrote, “In this sprawling oglefest, such things as "narrative" and "story" are remote little abstractions indeed. Director Steven Soderbergh uses the same reality-show looseness he brought to his K Street television series.” USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “Exuding heaps of postmodern cool — these guys never even break a sweat —Ocean's Twelve also gets comic mileage out of petty bickering among Danny's teammates.” In his review for the Village Voice, Dennis Lim wrote, “Watching other people's vacation home movies is rarely this fun. Quick, cheap thrills spiked with a jazzy, retro new wave vibe, Ocean's Twelve suggests a double issue of Us Weekly guest-edited by the old Cahiers du Cinema crew.” However, Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “D+” rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, “What's on screen is lazy, second-rate, phoned-in — a heist in which it's the audience whose pockets have been picked.” The New York Observer’s Andrew Sarris felt that the film “Hits a new low in condescending facetiousness, with no fewer than 15 performers of varying talents, tongues firmly in cheeks, undercutting all the genre's action conventions while camping up a storm on two continents.” Finally, Slate’s David Edelstein wrote, “Ocean's Twelve disintegrates along with its linearity. Two days after seeing it, I can't even remember how it ended. But I do remember Julia Roberts' endearing whoops of panic.”

Once again Soderbergh keeps the pace brisk and breezy, making the two-hour running time fly by. Like its predecessor, Ocean’s Twelve is beautifully shot with atmospheric lighting and saturated color as evident in the bright yellow that permeates Isabel’s Europol lecture or the green lighting that illuminates the underwater sequence during a heist that Danny and his crew pull off, or the red lighting that dominates the nightclub where Rusty and Isabel meet. Most of the film takes place in Europe and Soderbergh adopts the look of a European film from the 1960’s, which also applies to the eclectically groovy soundtrack from David Holmes that evokes a ‘60s Euro-lounge vibe. The director even described the film’s aesthetic as “the most expensive episode of a ‘60s television show ever.” He and Holmes agreed that the score would be completely different from Ocean’s Eleven in order to complement the different look and feel. Soderbergh is an excellent visual storyteller and this is evident in several scenes that he depicts without any dialogue, instead resorting to music married to visuals that conveys exactly what’s going on. He understands the kind of movie he’s making and doesn’t try to be too cute or wink knowingly at the audience, instead focusing at the task at hand: making a confident, entertaining movie. Granted, Ocean’s Twelve is no Traffic (2000), and it’s not meant to be, but you could do a lot worse with two hours of your time.

Next Week: Ocean's Thirteen

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

“Ocean’s Eleven was my opportunity to make a movie that has no desire except to give you pleasure, where you surrender without embarrassment or regret.” – Steven Soderbergh

Fresh from the one-two success of Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000), Steven Soderbergh made a conscious decision to shift gears and make a purely entertaining film for a major studio. He managed to convince movie stars George Clooney (whom he had already worked with on Out of Sight) and Brad Pitt to take major cuts in their multi-million dollar salaries and headline a remake of the Rat Pack heist film Ocean’s Eleven (1960). With Clooney and Pitt on board, Soderbergh was then able to get an impressive cast including the likes of Matt Damon and Julia Roberts (both of whom also agreed to take pay cuts) and avoid having his film come across as nothing more than a vanity project for a bunch of smug movie stars. On the contrary, Ocean’s Eleven (2001) is a slick heist film in the tradition of The Sting (1973) in the sense that you know the outcome (the good guys win) but the fun is in how they get there as Soderbergh utilizes every stylish technique that he has available at his disposal.

Daniel Ocean (George Clooney) has just been released from prison and is eager to return to his high-end criminal enterprises. He sets his sights on Las Vegas with plans to rob three prestigious casinos: the MGM Grand, the Mirage, and the Bellagio, all of which keep their considerable sums of money in an ultra-secure hi-tech vault controlled by Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) who, incidentally, is currently dating Danny’s ex-wife Tess (Julia Roberts). It’s not going to be easy and so, with the help of his good friend and ace fixer Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt), they recruit nine experts to help them pull off a near-impossible heist. In addition to the heist, which serves as the main plot, Ted Griffin’s screenplay expertly weaves in a subplot involving Danny attempt to reconnect with Tess.

This film oozes cool right from the opening credits that play over a fantastic shot of the Atlantic City skyline at night accompanied by funky trip-hop type music by Northern Irish disc jockey David Holmes. We meet Rusty wasting his time teaching young movie stars (Holly Marie Combs and Topher Grace among others making fun of themselves) to play cards. We meet him in Hollywood with a cool groove playing over his establishing shot. This sequence is a bit of meta fun as we see Pitt, one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, teaching other movie stars playing a parody of themselves being totally clueless at playing poker only to eventually be hustled by a bemused Danny. Soderbergh even slides in a few sly inside jokes, like Danny asking Topher Grace if it’s hard to make the transition from television to film, which, of course, is exactly what Clooney did. Or, how Grace gets mobbed by autograph hounds while Clooney and Pitt are completely ignored.

One of the best sequences in the film is when Danny and Rusty recruit their crew. The scene where they convince Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould) to bankroll their operation is a wonderful example of how expositional dialogue being delivered in the right way by the right actor can be entertaining and informative as Elliott Gould does a fantastic job of warning Danny and Rusty of just how dangerous Benedict is. From there, each character that Danny and Rusty approach is given their own introduction that briefly and succinctly highlights their unique skill and distinctive personality traits. Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon) is an up-and-coming pickpocket with uncanny dexterity. There’s the Malloy brothers, Virgil (Casey Affleck) and Turk (Scott Caan), two drivers by trade with one of them having an affinity for remote controlled devices and a perchance for bickering and irritating each other, which provides a good source of humor. Livingston Dell (Eddie Jemison) is an electronics expert in the area of surveillance. Basher Tarr (Don Cheadle) is a demolitions expert with Don Cheadle sporting an obviously exaggerated Cockney accent. Yen (Shaobo Qin) is a diminutive top-of-the-line acrobat that can get in and out of any tight space. Finally, there is Saul Bloom (Carl Reiner), a retired flimflam man coaxed back into action by Rusty. Each actor is given at least one scene, often more, to come front and center and do their thing and this is done in a way that doesn’t distract you from the story at hand, which is quite an accomplishment with such a large cast.

David Holmes expertly mixes jazz, funk, soul and hip hop in a way that evokes groovy trip hop or acid jazz but in a retro way that evokes Quincy Jones circa the 1970’s. The often-fat bass lines give certain musical cues a confident swagger. There is also plenty of Hammond organ and vibraphone looped to give a lounge-y kind of vibe at times. Later on in the film, Holmes brings in strings and brass to accentuate the romantic subplot between Danny and Tess. Holmes also incorporates songs, like Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” to fantastic effect. This came out of watching the original Ocean’s Eleven as Holmes explained in an interview, "Then I tried to think of ways to identify with what was going on - with it being a contemporary film, how to be original, but set within the heart of Las Vegas. Which is where the Elvis song 'A Little Less Conversation' came about, because obviously Elvis had a really strong affiliation with Las Vegas, and that track has a very contemporary feel."

Steven Soderbergh read Ted Griffin’s screenplay in an afternoon in January 2000. The next day he called producer Jerry Weintraub and told him he wanted to direct the film. What he liked about the script was that it didn’t evoke the original 1960 version but “had this one foot back in the heyday of the studio star-driven movie, like Howard Hawks or George Cukor.” Soderbergh had always been drawn to heist films because, “the conflicts are so clear and dramatic. This seemed to be everything that you want a big Hollywood film to be, on the script level.” He had just made two dramas – Erin Brockovich and Traffic – and wanted to make a fun movie. To prepare for shooting Ocean’s Eleven, he watched Ghostbusters (1984) because he was impressed at “that sort of physical scale [that] feels so tossed-off, with such understated performances and obvious generosity among all the performers.” He also studied films by David Fincher, Steven Spielberg and John McTiernan because they knew how to “orchestrate physical action the way I like to see it.” He looked at how these filmmakers used lens length and height, camera movement and editing, as well as, “how they used their extras, how they structured movements within shots that carried you to the next movement and the next.”

Soderbergh got George Clooney involved and half-jokingly told him, “let’s make it an Irwin Allen movie, where they used to have 10 stars.” Originally, the director considered casting Luke and Owen Wilson, Bruce Willis, and Ralph Fiennes as the villain. Once Clooney was on board, they got the rest of the cast to commit at radically reduced rates, starting with Brad Pitt. However, during filming, the cast stayed in their own 7,000-square-foot villas at the Bellagio. Before shooting, Soderbergh told his cast, “Show up ready to work. If you think you’re just going to walk through this, you’re mistaken. If anybody gets smug, we’re dead.” Soderbergh wanted to shoot in the Bellagio, the MGM Grand and the Mirage – an impossible feat for more mere mortals; however, Weintraub had the connections and the clout to make it happen. The production was allowed to shoot on the floor of the casinos during the day, which nobody is given access to and the casino bosses even shut down entire pits for Soderbergh to shoot in. This allowed the director to design shots that were complicated and large in scale.

Soderbergh wanted the lighting for Ocean’s Eleven to be based in reality and to look like it wasn’t lit at all – not a problem in Las Vegas, a place overloaded with every kind of light imaginable. At times, Soderbergh would add some color to enhance the mood for dramatic purposes in order to put the audience inside the world of the film. He also realized that the locations played a large part in the plot and was interested in showing as much of the environment as possible. One challenge Soderbergh faced was the logistics of filming big dialogue scenes with Danny and his crew in a visually interested way. He had a lot of people in confined spaces and didn’t want these scenes to be boring. So, he attempted to frame shots that clearly established where everyone was while also giving them enough depth and geometry to make the characters interesting to look at.

Ocean’s Eleven received mostly positive reviews from critics clearly charmed by what the film had to offer. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and wrote, “The movie excels in its delivery of dialogue. The screenplay by Ted Griffin is elegantly epigrammatic, with dialogue that sounds like a cross between Noel Coward and a 1940s noir thriller.” The New York Times’ Elvis Mitchell wrote, “Mr. Soderbergh does some of his best work in Ocean's Eleven, working with a ticking suavity he tried to bring to lesser movies like The Underneath. He has a breathtaking amount of technique at his fingertips, aided immensely by the popping freshness of the score by David Holmes, who he worked with successfully on Out of Sight. Mr. Holmes scales his rhythms to the picture's pace, giving the movie a heartbeat.” New York magazine’s Peter Rainer wrote, “Some of its members, such as Clooney and Roberts, epitomize the kind of old Hollywood glamour that would have fit right into the Bogart-Bacall forties. Their attractiveness carries a flagrant sense of sexual entitlement; they know they're sizzling, and they find this knowledge not only exhilarating but funny (and they're sexier for finding it so).” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “It wouldn't be wrong to call Ocean's Eleven a trifle, but it's a debonair trifle made with high-wire effrontery, the kind that can't be faked. This giddy and glancing charade is one of the most sheerly pleasurable movies to come out this year, and it cements Soderbergh's status as the reigning artist-entertainer at work in Hollywood today.” Even the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman had nice things to say: “The movie is slick and studiously cool—with plenty of visual flourishes but not too much soul.” However, USA Today only gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and Mike Clark wrote, “Despite dashes of droll dialogue from screenwriter Ted Griffin, the remake aims for cool but instead gets chilly. It's not a stretch to call it surprisingly glum.”

In a nice touch, Ocean’s Eleven never waxes nostalgic about the original film but instead is wistful about Las Vegas as it was in the 1960’s when the casinos were still run by the Mob and had yet to be corporatized and Disney-fied. This is reinforced in one of the motivations Danny has of robbing Benedict. It’s not just that he’s dating his ex-wife but Benedict also recently demolished one of the last old school casinos left in Vegas. Unlike Benedict, Danny respects the past and recruits Reuben and Saul, veteran con artists whose heyday was the ‘60s. It’s great to see Soderbergh giving actors like Gould and Reiner screen-time in a major studio film. These guys don’t work nearly enough and their performances in Ocean’s Eleven are a potent reminder of how good they can be if given the right material and the opportunity. Entrusted with only his second major studio film with an A-list budget, Soderbergh effortlessly orchestrates a fun, engaging popcorn movie like an old pro that has been doing this for their entire career.

Next week: Ocean's Twelve

Twelve Monkeys

"It's one thing to get lost in your own madness, but to become lost in somebody else's madness is weirder." – Terry Gilliam

How do you know when someone is crazy? This is a question that filmmaker Terry Gilliam tries to answer in many of his films, for he is obsessed by the notion of insanity – what makes someone insane and how do others view this person. Is someone really crazy or do they simply have a different view of the world than the rest of society? In the past, Gilliam's films have presented characters that tend to blur the boundary between sanity and madness, but perhaps his most complex treatment of this subject is Twelve Monkeys (1995). It is with this project that the filmmaker combines his long standing obsession of breathtaking visuals with his knack for working closely with actors. This combination has resulted in more mature films for Gilliam who is normally associated with stylish overkill: films that tend to let the visuals overwhelm the story and characters. And make no mistake, Twelve Monkeys contains some of the most stunning images you are ever going to see but never at the expense of the story or its characters and herein lies one of the reasons why Gilliam remains one of the most interesting people working in film today.

Twelve Monkeys is a film that constantly plays with, distorts, and more often than not, manipulates time. The film begins in the year 2035. A deadly virus has wiped out almost all of humanity, leaving the survivors to take refuge deep underground. Only the occasional foray up to the surface in protective gear by a select group of "volunteers" offers any clues as to what went wrong. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is one such volunteer who is particularly good at retrieving information. As a result, he soon finds himself being sent back in time to find out how the virus originated and who was responsible. Unfortunately, he goes back too far, arriving in 1990 and is promptly thrown into a rather nightmarish mental hospital in Baltimore where he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a fellow inmate with a loopy sense of reality that feeds all sorts of paranoid delusions of grandeur. Cole also encounters Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) a beautiful doctor who feels sympathy for him and his plight.

As Cole travels back and forth in time he begins to realize that one of the most important clues to the source of the deadly virus may lie in the rather enigmatic underground organization known only as The Army of the 12 Monkeys. Soon, Railly and Goines begin to play integral roles in Cole's search as he consistently crosses paths with them. But is this all taking place in Cole's mind? Is he really humanity's only hope at averting a catastrophic disaster or is he just insane? From the first shot to the film's conclusion we are never quite sure of Cole's sanity or lack thereof. It is just one of many questions that the audience must think about not only during the film but long after it ends.

The seeds of Twelve Monkeys lie in an obscure French New Wave film called La Jetee (1962) made by Chris Marker. The film was composed entirely of black and white photographs and set in Paris after World War III. It was an apocalyptic vision in reaction to the threat of nuclear annihilation that became prominent in the 1950s and 1960s. Writers David and Janet Peoples were approached by producer Robert Kosberg to do an adaptation of La Jetee. The screenwriting couple wasn't that keen on the idea, however. "We couldn't see the point. It's a masterpiece and we didn't see that there was anyway to translate that masterpiece," David remarked in an interview. And he was no slouch to the art of screenwriting, having rewritten the screenplay for Blade Runner (1982) and penned the brilliant Clint Eastwood film, Unforgiven (1992).

Kosberg got the Peoples to watch La Jetee again and the couple began to see possibilities for a different, more detailed take on the material. "How would we react to people who showed up and said 'Oh I've just popped up from the future' and in turn how would that person deal with our reaction." With this in mind, David and Janet set out to write a challenging piece of fiction that not only manipulated our conventional views of time but that also dealt with the notion of madness. Janet explained in an interview, "We were very interested in asking questions like 'Is this man mad? And how about the prophets of the past, were they mad? Were they true prophets? Were they coming from another time? What are all the different possibilities?'" The film's script argues that certain people who are classified insane by society at large may not really be crazy at all but are in actuality presenting ideas that are way ahead of our time. And perhaps the blame for this misunderstanding should be leveled at the psychiatric profession which, as one character in the film observes, has become the new religion of a society that has deserted traditional faith for modern technology.

After showing the finished screenplay to Marker and getting his blessings, the Peoples were faced with the daunting task of finding someone who would not only click with the material but also have the visual flair that the story needed. The couple figured that the only director to handle such tricky subject matter was somebody like Ridley Scott or Terry Gilliam. The theme of madness that plays such a prominent role in the script fit right in with Gilliam's preoccupations and so he seemed the natural choice to direct. As luck would have it the filmmaker was between projects and looking for work after several years of seeing potential projects fall through for various reasons.

Gilliam was also eager to take a lot of Hollywood money (a $30 million budget) and create a strange art film that would fly in the face of the traditional mainstream movie. "The idea that someone's writing a script like this in Hollywood and getting the studio to pay for it was pretty extraordinary. So I thought let's continue to see how much money we can get the studio to spend." Gilliam's battles with Hollywood studios are the stuff of legend – most notably his struggle with Universal over the release of Brazil (1984). They wanted to revoke the director's final cut privileges to insert a happier ending instead of Gilliam's decidedly downbeat ending. Gilliam's vision prevailed in the end, but the ordeal left him understandably wary of further studio involvement. He had reconciled somewhat with Hollywood by making The Fisher King (1991) which turned out to be a surprise commercial and critical success.

Architecture plays an important role in Terry Gilliam's films and Twelve Monkeys is no different. "I've always used architecture as if it was a character." To this end, Gilliam found all sorts of intriguing architecture to populate his film. This included the transformation of an 1820's prison into a 1990's mental hospital where the film's protagonist, James Cole first meets the Jeffrey Goines. The director found that the structure was designed like a wheel with spokes and hub. And so Gilliam used one section where three spoke-like parts headed off into nowhere. "It seemed to me [that] this trifurcated room was right for multiple personalities." This feeling of madness is further amplified by the extensive use of skewed, off-kilter camera angles that are often shot at low angles to constantly distort and disorient the scene. "We started doing it and it got more and more fun to see how far we could push it because I wanted to create an atmosphere that you don't know whether this guy is crazy or whether he actually does come back from the future." The unusual camera angles not only mimic Cole's confused state but also reflect Jeffrey's manic, hyperactive worldview. By presenting the mindsets of these two characters in such a fashion, Gilliam is inviting us to see the world through their eyes and in the process offer a new, unique take on the world that we might not have been aware of before.

Gilliam was not just content to challenge mainstream audiences with unusual visuals and subject matter, but he also wanted to mess with people's perception of certain movie stars by casting box office names like Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis against type. "One of the reasons [for doing Twelve Monkeys] was taking Bruce and putting him into situations and asking of him things I don't think he's ever done before or that people haven't seen him do ... and with Brad Pitt it's the same thing. Brad is pretty laconic in some ways. Suddenly he's a blabbermouth, jabbering away at high speed. I love doing that, playing with the public's perception of that star; otherwise, it wouldn't be fun." As a result we get a very different Bruce Willis here than we have come to expect. Gone are the wisecracks and smart-aleck attitude and instead we see Willis impart a real wounded sensibility to the character of James Cole. The reluctant time traveler always seems to be flinching at every little thing, often appearing disoriented or distracted as he struggles to understand what is going on around him. Willis displays great skill in this role – perhaps the best of his career – as he creates a truly tragic figure that may or may not be losing his mind.

Brad Pitt's character, Jeffrey Goines, resides at the exact opposite end of the spectrum. Where Cole is a sad, brooding figure, Goines is a frenetic psychotic oscillating wildly between paranoid ravings and calm interludes where his madness is kept in check but still resides behind wild eyes. It's a daring performance for Pitt who lets it all hang out as he gladly chews up the scenery with his loony radical environmentalist cum revolutionary that all but steals every scene he's in. It's a performance that Pitt worked long and hard to achieve and it paid off in a Golden Globe Award that year for Best Supporting Actor and an Academy Award nomination in the same category.

Twelve Monkeys was well-received by critics at the time. Roger Ebert wrote, “the more you know about movies (especially the technical side), the more you're likely to admire it. But a comedy it's not. And as an entertainment, it appeals more to the mind than to the senses.” The Washington Post’s Desson Howe wrote, “In a movie in which time travel is used to rectify the past, it's too bad scriptwriters David and Janet Peoples didn't go through the time/space tunnel to work on that first draft again. But Willis and Pitts's performances, Gilliam's atmospherics and an exhilarating momentum easily outweigh such trifling flaws.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised Bruce Willis’ performance: “Mr. Willis holds the film together with his poignant, battered physicality, the suffering of a man fighting desperately for sanity and survival.” However, Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “Intent on both dazzling and punishing the viewer, Gilliam gets lost in creepy spectacle and plenty of old film clips (notably Vertigo).”

It is easy to see what attracted Terry Gilliam to a project like Twelve Monkeys. In keeping with his past films, this one also played "with the same old things – time, reality, madness – so I was intrigued." Even though it was one of the few projects he did not originate himself, Gilliam quickly made the film his own. In fact, it is Twelve Monkeys' unique look that prevents any easy categorization. As Gilliam observed in an interview, "I'm determined to make it indefinable." It is this avoidance of any clear cut genre that makes the film a riddle waiting to be solved. The film is also structured somewhat like an onion. On the surface, the audience knows very little at the beginning, but gradually as it progresses and the layers are removed, more and more of the mystery is revealed. However, this is not readily apparent after an initial viewing. Only after subsequent screenings does the full impact and brilliance of what Gilliam and his cast and crew have created sink in. It is this great amount of care and detail that has clearly gone into this film that makes Twelve Monkeys worth watching.

DVD of the Week: Burn After Reading

As they did with Fargo (1996), the Coen brothers followed up the Academy Award-winning crime thriller No Country For Old Men (2007) with a comedy, in this case Burn After Reading (2008), a farce set in Washington, D.C. The Coens have adhered to the pattern of following a dramatic film with a comedy for most of their career – Raising Arizona (1987) followed Blood Simple (1985), for example. Whether it’s by design or just to amuse themselves, they seem to like mixing up genres.

CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) is being taken off international duty because of an alleged drinking problem and is relegated to a desk job in Washington, D.C. Understandably upset, he quits and decides to write his memoirs. Meanwhile, his wife (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a U.S. Treasury agent. A compact disc with a copy of Cox’s memoirs is found at a fitness center by one of its employees, Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), a dimwitted fitness nut. He teams up with a fellow employee named Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) to blackmail Cox. She plans to spend her half of the money on completely unnecessary cosmetic surgery.

With the exception of Brad Pitt, the cast plays their roles fairly straightforward, so much so that you’d hardly know it was a comedy. As a result, Pitt all but runs away with the film as a clueless goofball who thinks he knows what he’s doing but is in way over his head, which is never a good thing in a Coen brothers film. The scene where Chad meets Cox is a lot of fun to watch if only to see the fitness trainer try to match wits with the ex-CIA man. Pitt squints suspiciously and tries so very hard to appear competent. He delivers a wonderfully entertaining comedic performance that seems at odds with the rest of the film. Much like Tom Hanks in The Ladykillers (2004), Pitt deserves to be in a better Coen brothers film.

The problem with Burn After Reading is that it’s populated by vain, greedy and generally unlikable characters that only care about themselves. And in case you missed the point or message of the film, two CIA bureaucrats (Rasche and Simmons) sum everything up for us, like Marge in Fargo and The Stranger in The Big Lebowski (1998) only in those cases it was done for poignant effect. In case of Burn After Reading it simply spells everything out just in case you nodded off partway through or lost interest in what was happening. As they demonstrated with Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and The Ladykillers, the Coens are not successful with films in a contemporary setting (even No Country was a period piece). By their high standards, Burn After Reading is a disappointment.

Special Features:

“Finding the Burn” takes a brief look at the making of this film. George Clooney points out that it’s not a political film per se but rather involving “people doing dumb things.” Both Ethan Coen and actress Frances McDormand say that the film is about middle-aged people while Ethan jokingly refers to it as their “Tony Scott, Bourne Identity kind of movie. . .without the explosions.”

“DC Insiders Run Amuck” examines the origins of the film. The Coens wanted to write a film for specific actors in mind and so it was contingent on getting the likes of Clooney and Brad Pitt. Joel Coen says that Pitt embraced his “inner knucklehead” on this one. Basically, the idea was to transform Clooney and Pitt into two “suburban dorks.”

Finally, there is “Welcome Back George,” which takes a look at how the Coens like to work with Clooney and always want him to play idiotic characters or “dopes” as the actor calls them.

Seven

Living in any major metropolitan city in North America can be a dangerous experience. Ask anyone who lives in places like New York City, Philadelphia or Los Angeles. There is a certain amount of fear and paranoia that exists in these densely populated, often congested areas. When you have that many different types of people living in one place problems are bound to arise. In the past, these problems have always seemed containable, maybe even solvable, but now there is a certain sense of pessimism or apathy that pervades the public consciousness. Where once there was hope, now there is only despair, or worse yet, disinterest. Seven (1995) is a film that taps into these feelings with startling accuracy and clarity. It is a disturbing descent into a dark, urban hell that is at once powerful and unpleasant. Call it an urban horror film.

Detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is a thoughtful man on the verge of retirement and clearly tired of the uncaring city he is forced to protect. His early retirement is a way out, an escape from this horrible place that keeps him awake at night with its noises of people yelling, blaring sirens, and incessant traffic. As the film begins, he is assigned a new partner and a new case. David Mills (Brad Pitt) is a young, up-and-coming detective who is energetic and hopeful — everything that Somerset is not.

The case starts off simply enough: an extremely obese man is found dead in his squalid apartment. It seems that the man had been force fed at gunpoint. At first, Somerset wants nothing to do with the case, but then a second murder occurs. A prominent defense attorney is found dead in his office with the word, "greed" written on the carpet in his own blood. After going back to the previous crime scene and finding the word, "gluttony," Somerset realizes that there is a pattern forming — these murders are in fact fashioned after the seven deadly sins: sloth, wrath, pride, lust, envy, greed, and gluttony. Still, he does not wish to get involved in the investigation, but the unique style of these murders continues to nag at him. So, he and Mills team up and find themselves delving deeper and deeper into this increasingly disturbing case.

Seven's origins lie in a screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker, whose previous credits include a string of forgettable films like Brainscan (1994) and Hideaway (1995). To his credit, these scripts were altered significantly by other people to the point where they barely resembled his original idea. This is all changed with Seven, which remained relatively untouched throughout the entire production. Even the downbeat ending was not changed, thanks in large part to the influence of the film's two big stars, Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, and the film's director, David Fincher, who insisted that the ending was not to be changed in any way.

The primary influence for the Seven's screenplay came from Walker’s time spent in New York City while trying to make it as a screenwriter. "I didn't like my time in New York, but it's true that if I hadn't lived there I probably wouldn't have written Seven." This distaste for big city life is readily evident from the first exterior shot of the film that features an urban abyss filled with crowded, noisy denizens while an oppressive rain always seems to fall without respite. This look was an integral part of the film as Fincher wanted to show a city that was "dirty, violent, polluted, often depressing. Visually and stylistically, that's how we wanted to portray this world. Everything needed to be as authentic and raw as possible."

After the Alien 3 (1992) debacle, Fincher did not read a script for a year and a half. He said, “I thought I’d rather die of colon cancer than do another movie.” He was drawn to Walker’s script because he found it to be a “connect-the-dots movie that delivers about inhumanity. It’s psychologically violent. It implies so much, not about why you did but how you did it.” Fincher approached making Seven like a “tiny genre movie, the kind of movie Friedkin might have made after The Exorcist.” Fincher worked with cinematographer Darius Khondji and together they adopted a simple approach to the camerawork. One starting off point was the television show Cops and “how the camera is in the backseat peering over people’s shoulder.”

Fincher turned to production designer Arthur Max to create a dismal world that often eerily mirrors its inhabitants. "We created a setting that reflects the moral decay of the people in it," says Max. "Everything is falling apart, and nothing is working properly." The film's brooding, dark look was also created through a unique chemical process whereby the silver in the film stock was re-bonded which in turn deepened the dark, shadowy images in the film and increased its overall tonal quality. Max and Fincher do such an impressive job on the setting that the city begins to take a life of its own, almost becoming another character.

However detailed and impressive the setting is, it never overwhelms the characters that dwell there. In particular, the three main characters, played by Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and Gwyneth Paltrow (who plays Pitt's wife in the film), are so strong and distinctive that they refuse to be lost in the atmospheric mise en scene. Freeman is excellent as the jaded policeman who is ready to call it quits. Somerset is a world apart from the stereotypical, shoot-first-ask-questions-later cop that is usually depicted in these kinds of films. Freeman portrays him as a patient man, who is methodical and thorough in his methods — much like the killer and much like the film itself, which takes its time and draws you in with an almost hypnotic intensity. Somerset is also a thoughtful and reflective person. There are many shots of Freeman just standing or sitting in silence as he tries to figure everything out, to make sense of it all. Most films would never take the time to show these kinds of things. When Walker wrote the screenplay, he originally envisioned William Hurt as Somerset and the character’s name came from one of his favorite authors, W. Somerset Maugham. During pre-production, Al Pacino was considered for the role of Somerset but decided to do City Hall (1996) instead. Watching the film now one can’t imagine anyone else playing the role but Freeman.

For such an ominous and forbidding film, there are some real moments of warmth and compassion and these are provided by Paltrow. There is a great scene where she invites Freeman's character over for dinner. The way she greets them, “Hello men,” with a warm, inviting smile, instantly draws you in. The three characters talk and laugh over a meal and this scene comes as a welcome relief from the horror that we have experienced so far. Paltrow, with her engaging smile and gentleness, imbues Seven with a much needed touch of humanity and transforms what could have easily been a standard wife role into a touching portrayal of a woman torn between the love for her husband and her doubts of living in such a threatening city.

Credit must also go to Fincher and Khondji, who create a visually evocative world and take the time to develop the characters. No rapid-fire MTV editing here, which is a surprise considering Fincher's background as music video director. He only breaks the suspenseful pace for a truly exhilarating chase through a run-down building as the two detectives pursue a mysterious figure that might be the killer. We are suddenly thrust into an adrenaline-driven scene fueled by jarring, hand-held camera shots that are quick and disorienting. This approach enhances the scary, unpredictable quality of the scene as we frantically try to get our bearings. Up until then, nothing prepares us for this sudden jolt and the effect is very powerful indeed.

In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-a-half stars out of four stars and wrote, “Seven is well-made in its details, and uncompromising in the way it presents the disturbing details of the crimes. It is certainly not for the young or the sensitive. Good as it is, it misses greatness by not quite finding the right way to end.” Janet Maslin, in her review for the New York Times, wrote, “Mr. Freeman moves sagely through Seven with the air of one who has seen it all and will surely be seeing something better very soon. His performance has just the kind of polish and self-possession that his co-star, Mr. Pitt, seems determined to avoid.” In his review for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers wrote, “It's not the identity of the killer that gives Seven its kick – it's the way Fincher raises mystery to the level of moral provocation.”

Desson Howe, in his review for the Washington Post, wrote, “But what makes things watchable is Fincher's direction. He has a gift for building understated menace. His cinematographer, Darius Khondji, puts a silky contrast into the colors, making things seem velvety, dark and intense.” In his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “the filmmakers stick to their vision with such dedication and persistence that something indelible comes across—something ethically and artistically superior to The Silence of the Lambs that refuses to exploit suffering for fun or entertainment and leaves you wondering about the world we're living in.” Finally, Sight and Sound proclaimed the film to have “the scariest ending since George Sluizer’s original The Vanishing . . . and stands as the most complex and disturbing entry in the serial killer genre since Manhunter.”

Seven is ultimately a mesmerizing condemnation of life in sprawling, urban areas. For such a negative view, one would have to look back to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1973), a film that also presented a nightmarish vision of a big city. While the two films share some of the same thematic preoccupations, Seven's stylish predecessor would seem to be Blade Runner (1982) with its noisy, congested, rainswept landscape and film noir look. Seven is a powerful, distinctive film that offers a refreshing take on the tired serial killer genre.

Some of the screenshots that accompany this article came from the excellent Movie Screenshots blog.