"lust, n.
1. Intense or unrestrained sexual craving.
2. An overwhelming desire or craving: a lust for power.
Intense eagerness or enthusiasm: a lust for life.
3.sinful longing; the inward sin which leads to the falling away from God.
intr.v. lust·ed, lust·ing, lusts
To have an intense or obsessive desire, especially one that is sexual."
Lust is not just confined to a lust for sex. It is an overwhelming desire or craving, in particular but not limited to sexual cravings.
In The Pardoners Tale by Chaucer, a book cited by Morgan Freeman's character as an inspiration for the killer, the main message is "Radix malorum est cupititas", ie, The root of all evil is cupidity."
"Cupidity, n.
Excessive desire, especially for wealth..."
Especially, but not limited to, wealth.
The prostitute desires money. This is arguably an intense desire for her, and to attain it, she employs sexual methods.
She has "fallen away from god", as has every other "sinner" who is killed in seven, in John Doe's opinion.
Which is why Se7en shoulkd not be dismissed as sloppy writing. If the prostitute's death doesn't add up, it is a brutal murder committed by a mad wannabe-preacher for dubious reasons, and it is just as well that you cannot get your head around it.
But when John Doe's character is inspected deeper, and his motives are questioned, he becomes less two dimensional - an unscrupulous muderer with an archaic knowledge of middle english culture, complete with fire and brimstone retribution, which has somehow ingrained itself into his modern american values and psyche
That isn't sloppy writing, it's slick.
And before you say "well, tecnically, John Doe isn't the muderer, her John did it", the client was under duress; he had a gun in his mouth.
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sawakatoome
18 years ago
daddyrae wrote: That isn't sloppy writing, it's slick.
Bollox is it slick. 'Se7en' was borne out of a desire to tell a story that made people leave the cinema feeling they had seen evil and left wondering over the intricacies and subtleties of John Doe's 'labyrinthine' plot. The thing is, you wake up the next day and you realise its nothing more than a straightforward run-of-the-mill serial killer thriller. Hell, if the serial killer didn't base his work on something religious and ostensibly dark, no one would care less today .. it'd be rightly relegated to the shock shlock bin along with the 'Saw' franchise.
Please stop trying to read any more into the plot and the sins than what's on the surface .. the writers didn't. First off, if you *wanted* to go a bit deeper (which it seems you were attempting), the sins actually read, in Latin, "superbia", "avaritia", "luxuria", "invidia", "gula", "ira" and "acedia".
What we're discussing is luxuria .. lust .. and this pertains only to sexual matters .. in a hooker/john relationship, the john would be the one guilty of lust. For your own reason, you were trying to claim that the hooker *was* guilty .. well, yes, she was .. but not guilty of lust. She was guilty of avaritia (avarice, greed) .. she covets money.
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daddyrae
18 years ago
By spewing a list of latin words for sins with only explanation of one, you're going deeper?
Nah, you're wrong.
I can't say I saw Seven, thought "damn I have just seen evil" , and then thought the next day "well, actually, I guess he wasn't so evil after all. He was just a run of the mill serial killer." I don't know if there is such a thing.
Would you not agree that the serial killer who kills and is then killed for the commission of sin under his own volition is an intriguing character? He has it all planned to a tee, and is so convinced of his own righteousness that he is (paradoxically) willing to die to further his own cause
Are you saying that the actions of a serial killer are only ostensibly dark? Under the surface, is it all good intentions and motives?
Or are you saying that the seven deadly sins are only ostensibly a dark subject matter? Sweetness and light disguised as a pervasive threat of damnation without atonement?
How can you claim something to be ostensible if you haven't already looked under the surface?
The writers of the film clearly meant there to be a subtext. Morgan Freeman's character suggests a reading list to Brad Pitt's, including Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales, Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio. Viewing any film as an isolated event is a big mistake.
Viewing the deadly sins as separately operating character traits is also crap. All the sins are inextricably interlinked. You cannot be lustful without being gluttonous. You cannot be greedy without being envious, you cannot be covetous without being lustful. If you want to get into the semantics behind the original latin, you'll find youself wrong.
Saw was a peice of faece, and unworthy of comparison to Seven.
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sawakatoome
18 years ago
No, I would not agree that the serial killer who kills and is then killed for the commission of sin under his own volition is necessarily and automatically an intriguing character.
Something is purely ostensible (and pure faeces) if I have already looked under the surface and all that it there is text and pretentiousness.
The writers of the film did definitely not clearly mean there to be a subtext. Simply because a character, Morgan Freeman's, suggests a reading list to another character, Brad Pitt's, namely Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales, Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio, does not an interesting, let alone artistic, film make. It does make for good pretentiousness though, I'll give you that!
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Catpriest
18 years ago
Is some sort of American habit to break down on your own movies ? At least break down lousy movies in stead of Se7en and The Game ...
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sawakatoome
18 years ago
Who are you talking to? I'm guessing you're talking to an American .. whichever on here they are.
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homer-jay-simpson
18 years ago
sawakatoome is awesome. The writer of some of the dumbest posts I've ever seen on this site. WTF was the latin all about? Are we supposed to all bow down at his feet for knowing how to Google a few words? Idiot.
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sawakatoome
18 years ago
Did I hit a nerve?
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RMS1949
17 years ago
Seven,, so over-rated ?? Nows here a real intelligent thread..
Great writing,,acting,atmosphere and the most surprising ending ever.. yeah right..
Stick to finding cheats for dungeon-crawl blow-up games... LOL
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scott-allin
16 years ago
Se7en is style over substance, nothing more, nothing less. Pitt is wooden, Paltrow's character underwritten, and the whole plot is riddled with holes and has the single most predictable "twist" ending (other than Bruce Willis being a ghost in The 6th Sense) that I have ever endured. The whole seemingly random switch from police procedural with a "whodunnit" element to the melodramatic nonsense that ensues once Spacey turns himself in is clunky and unwelcome.
Tattoo by contrast has more heart in it. I cared about the characters and their fate. The plot and tone actually remained pretty consistent throughout and the pacing was tighter. It was also visually stylish and had it been made in Hollywood and perhaps most importantly for the global market - in the English language, then it would have assumed its rightful place as a huge success in financial and critical terms. As it is, far fewer will ever bother to watch this movie than it actually deserves and people that only watch the majorly over-hyped movies playing at their local multiplex or rented from their local Blockbuster will continue to believe that the deeply flawed Se7en is some kind of high water mark in this genre, when movies like Tattoo prove clearly that it is in fact very ordinary indeed.
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