I finished watching "The Seven Deadly Sins" late last night.
This is a film with strong religious overtones, and when I see the title, I think of the similar "Seventh Seal". If Bergman's questioning and exploration of the roots of faith and the existence of God in The Seventh Seal, the Seven Deadly Sins show what the world would be like if faith were lost.
The New York in the film is gray, damp, dirty, chaotic, and the continuous murder is simply a hell on earth.
The beginning is two generations of police officers, young and old, tracking down the murderer, which feels like a detective movie. The tragic images of the slain and the gloomy scene of the crime are psychologically stressful at the beginning of the film. In the third case, they suddenly realized that the murderer was preaching in the form of killing, punishing in the name of God the seven great sins that the Catholic Church considered eternal robbery: gluttony, greed, laziness, anger, pride, lust, and jealousy. The religious significance of the film begins to emerge from here, and it becomes more and more intensely relevant as the plot progresses, especially near the end of the film, when the murderer complains that he was chosen by God to punish those who are guilty.
The film seems to be just showing the world that human nature is depraved and that sinful people are punished. In this way, the film has a kind of moral exhortation to warn the world, so that people may reflect on whether they are guilty after watching it. However, what makes these people guilty, what makes the murderer intolerable and punished by killing in the name of God, the film does not seem to give a clear explanation. Is it because of a lack of faith? In the West, the Enlightenment discovered reason, and since then, reason has gradually been pushed to the supremacy, and people's self-consciousness has been expanding, fully affirming human reason and beginning to despise God. In modern times, reason with science and technology as the core has destroyed the spirit of religious belief, and human beings who believe that science and technology are omnipotent feel that reason can achieve everything. It is true that rationality, represented by science, has indeed promoted the rapid progress of Western society and promoted it to complete the process of modernization. But reason is also increasingly becoming a shackle that binds people to themselves. According to Zimmer' view, the development of society is increasingly dependent on "rationalized" things such as efficiency, calculation, and punctuality, and such rationalization is actually a kind of "materialization", money and commercial value become the only measure of all value, and the relationship between people becomes increasingly indifferent due to the power of money. In the film, the indifferent reality of the modern city is constantly displayed. For example, William mentions that the lady who encounters the rapist should not shout for help and shout for fire fighting before anyone pays attention; David and Tracy, who are deceived by the landlord, live in a house that is constantly shaken by the subway; and the landlord treats the tenant who is tortured into a living ghost as the best tenant because he regularly receives rent in the mailbox.
William Sr.'s attitude is actually that of the modern city people, who are disgusted with the world, and after witnessing a street robbery, he gets into a taxi, the driver asks him where he is going, he says: "Far far away... I don't know this place any more......。 "His chosen attitude is to escape. His psyche was exposed by David during a bar conversation with David, who also said that he would not be like this, knowing the evils of this world, but still persevering in fighting it. William didn't object, his idea was true, he realized that he should also face the world positively and could not escape anymore, so he went home and smashed the watch that made him feel more lonely. And when the officer finally asked him where he was going to go in retirement, he said, "around, I'll be around." David's insistence, however, was not blind optimism, but because he had the motivation and conviction that it was love for his wife. In the film, David can be seen coming home from his inner dialogue with William, holding his wife and saying: I love you, very much... But William's insistence was somewhat unavoidable, and it was only a personal act.
It's a desperate film that shows the evil and indifference of the world, but doesn't tell people how to avoid the aggravation of the situation. Is it to preserve the goodness of human nature and the conversion to God? However, the tracy portrayed in the film with beautiful humanity is eventually brutally killed by the murderer. The film shows the darkest side of the world, completely obscuring the beautiful light and warm side, David's love with Tracy is still counted as a beam of light on this dark background, and finally disappeared due to Tracy's murder. Where is man's way out? At the end of the film, william, the old police officer, quotes Hemingway as saying: "The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part。 This ending is too unconvincing, this world is not a good world, how is it worth people to fight?
In addition, an interesting phenomenon is seen in this film. It is the point that Bozeman repeatedly discussed in "Entertainment to Death" and "The Disappearance of Childhood", and the emergence of new media has changed the way people perceive the world. Officers William and David represent two generations influenced by different mediums. William Sr. grew up in a print media environment, and he was supposed to have been born in the 20s and 30s, when television was not yet widespread. And David was obviously the generation who grew up watching TV. So they show two completely different ways of handling cases. Printed materials are composed of characters, reading requires the brain to constantly decode, memorize, echo, summarize, abstract, is a typical logical thinking process, the old William is adhering to the print media to create a logical, meticulous, profound way of thinking, good at finding details, and using this as a clue for logical reasoning, encountering problems and even flipping through classical works, showing a calm and cautious style of investigation. Television is a combination of light and shadow and sound, watching TV does not need to use the brain, people can understand the popular language and pictures on tv without any effort, from childhood to see the image bias to the visual experience of David's performance is crazy noise, impulsive, irritable, oil cavity slippery tone, full of dirty words, the investigation is also to several live pictures turned over and over endlessly watching. Several of The Books of Dante given to him by William Sr. were cursed by him and thrown into drawers.
In addition, when William Sr. went to the library to check the materials, he encountered a group of idle colleagues. They stayed in the library all year, only knowing how to drink and play cards, and when William asked them why they didn't learn knowledge, they laughed at themselves for having a culture, and then turned on the record player, and the tune was Bach's "Aria on the G Strings", in the quiet and peaceful melody, the old William was thinking, and they continued to play cards for fun. The wise and elegant music of the sages is ignored, and in such a plot, the piece is like the lamentation of the degradation of civilization.
Also, morgan freeman, an old black man, is so good at acting, especially the expression and voice when he finally answers the police officer's question where he will go after retirement, and he says "around, I'll be around." The first time I saw him in "The Shawshank Redemption," I thought the black prisoner he played was really good. I heard that he also acted in "Counterfeit God", and I will definitely look for opportunities to watch it in the future. Then there's Pitt, fiercely handsome, although the young police officer who plays him is impulsive and reckless.