Significant Rewatch: Se7en on the big screen. Is this the new normal?
On its 30th anniversary the cinema was packed. Movie-going isn't dead. It's morphed.
I feel cold, wet, and dirty, and I need to take a hot shower to shake it off. I probably won’t sleep easy tonight either. I have seen David Fincher’s Se7en - or is it Seven - when it initially came out on home video back in 1996 or ‘97. So I’ve never had the chance to see it on the big screen. I was also underage, so there is that.
With its 30th anniversary approaching and my 4K and Blu-ray collection gradually expanding I thought I should acquire the movie on disc. It’s recently been restored and preserved. And so it was high time I watched it again and experience what it was that made it such a hit when it came out. It has since become a modern classic and its cinematography is still referenced. It is beautiful, in its way. Borrowing from the b-movies of a by-gone era at Warner Bros., cinematographer Darius Khondji (Delicatessen, Evita, Panic Room) timelessly captures the film noir aesthetic without it standing out or verging into cliché. “I wonder if it still holds up” a friend questioned when I mentioned I was going to see it. “It definitely does” I texted as soon as I came out.
I didn’t get round to purchasing the home movie version, and last week I realised it was playing tonight on the big screen. This was my chance. I took my time getting a ticket, which it turned out was a gamble - little did I know it was selling out! Looking at the web screen with the tiny numbered seats for me to choose which one to pick, almost all were marked red.
What do people actually want?
I have previously written about sequel fatigue and a rising trend in audiences leaving their homes to see classics at the movies. The fact is movie-going numbers are down, they’ve never recovered back up to pre-Covid days, and Distributors seem to be at a loss. More sequels seems to be what they think is required. Inside Out 2 has been a major success this summer, doubling what the first film made - but industry commentators are hoping Disney and Pixar don’t take this as a sign to keep churning them out. It’s likely merely an exception (as Pixar often have been), one of those gem films that you can take everyone to, from your grandmother, the teenagers, and the little ones.
What made this evening’s near-sell-out screening of a 30 year old film about a couple of detectives on the hunt for a sadistic serial killer even more interesting to me is that just this morning I happened to be listening to the BBC’s news about the lack lustre movie-going summer, in terms of numbers and business. The BBC’s reporter from the frontline of the industry, Tom Brook, was talking about how, though the expected numbers for big Hollywood releases are down, what seems to be growing is younger people going to see older films.
After tonight’s film was over, people didn’t rush out at the first sign of the credits. They stuck around and talked or merely sat there and took the film in. What I won’t forget are the two teenagers walking in front of me when I was leaving: they were talking about how awesome the ending was and how great it wasn’t some big action or fighting sequence - as if that’s the norm their generation has become accustomed to. If that is the case, then this isn’t about hoping something might change. It has to.
Movie-going isn’t dead, and cinemas don’t have to die out. No matter what Sony, Samsung and other hardware makers might think, not everyone has the economic viability to own a massive screen and surround sound speakers. Nor does anything beat the communal experience (amongst a respectable, phone-free, crunchy-snack-free crowd, of course). Personally I’m noting the dates in my diary for the upcoming screenings of Mission:Impossible, Interstellar, and of course 1988’s Beetlejuice in preparation for the *ahem* sequel. And all of that before Lyon’s annual Lumiere Film Festival in October, which has this year announced several Kurosawa films and a screening of Dreyer’s Vampyr with a live orchestra.
There’s plenty to be excited about.
