Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Allusions to "Purgatorio" in the film Se7en



           Se7en, starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, is a thrilling crime film that came out in 1995. It follows the police work of two homicide detectives, Detectives Sommerset and Mills as they track down a deranged serial killer who chooses victims who are guilty of committing one of the seven deadly sins. The incorporation of the seven deadly sins creates an allusion to the seven terraces of Dante’s “Purgatorio”. The victims in Se7en are murdered in fashions that have similarities to the punishments received by the souls in “Purgatorio.”
            In “Purgatorio,” those found guilty of gluttony are forced to starve while being surrounded by all sorts of delicious looking fruits, quite a tantalizing experience. In Se7en, quite the opposite punishment is forced upon the victim found guilty of gluttony. The victim, an excessively obese man, is held captive and forced to eat an extraordinary quantity of food; so large a quantity of food that his stomach lining begins to fracture. At this point, the murderer repeatedly kicks the man in his side until he expires.
            Those souls found guilty of greed in “Purgatorio” were forced to lie face down on the ground. The murderer in Se7en selected a lawyer as his victim who he felt was guilty of greed. As his punishment, Kevin Spacey removes a section of the lawyer’s abdomen and leaves him to die on the floor of his luxurious apartment complex.
            The slothful, in “Purgatorio” are forced to run constantly. The punishment of the slothful victim in Se7en is quite opposite in nature, much like the victim found guilty of gluttony. The murderer in Se7en straps a man to a bed and leaves him there for over a year to rot away. He is kept alive via an i.v. drip. When the detectives discover the victim, he appears to be deceased and in the process of decomposing. This is not the case. He is still very much alive; and be warned, if you have not seen the movie, this scene is incredibly startling… just a heads up.
            Those souls found to be guilty of envy were forced to have their eyes sewn shut in “Purgatorio.” The murderer in Se7en decides to take some liberties with the nature of this punishment and completely removes the head of a woman who he found to be envious.
            Souls who were exiled to the terrace of wrath/anger were forced to walk through a thick, choking smoke. I cannot go into much detail regarding the victim found guilty of wrath/anger and his/her punishment in Se7en as it will spoil the ending of the movie.
            As their punishment, large, heavy stones were placed upon the backs of the souls found to be prideful in “Purgatorio.” In Se7en, the victim found guilty of pride, a beautiful but incredibly vain young woman has her nose cut off. This causes her to fall into a severe depression and as a result, she overdoses on prescription drugs.
            In “Purgatorio” the lustful are punished by being placed into a fiery wind. The punishment of the lustful victim in Se7en is arguably the most graphic and violent murder in the movie. I will not be going into details about it here. Be warned, it is not for the faint-hearted.
            Throughout the film, Morgan Freeman’s character reads up on the Divine Comedy and recognizes it as the model that Kevin Spacey is replicating in his murders. Brad Pitt is a bit less convinced and refuses to acknowledge the storyline of the Divine Comedy as a piece of relevant information in the murder cases. At one point he refers to Dante as “Fuckin’ Dante, poetry-writing faggot! Piece of shit, mother-fucker.” Needless to say he has a harder time embracing the literature…
           Below is a link to the scene involving sloth.
 

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