Buy it... only if you desire twenty minutes of Howard Shore's menacingly churning and frightfully depressing low brass score, heard in its only consistent, impactual form during the climactic execution scene.

Avoid it... if you expect the commercial album for this soundtrack to contain either of the credits songs (opening or closing) or any consistent representation of the film's incredibly oppressive mood.

Shore

Seven: (Howard Shore) So disgusting was the plot of David Fincher's 1995 thriller Seven that it actually turned its biggest vice into a source of blockbuster appeal. Through outstanding acting performances and a bleached process of photography that convincingly conveyed the decay of urban society, the production grossed ten times more than its $30 million budget, earning both critical and popular praise while largely overlooked by major awards. It's a masterpiece of despair, so overwhelmingly depressing that it captures your attention despite its absolutely grotesque depictions of violence. A killer frustrated by society's ills creates elaborate murder scenes inspired by the historical seven deadly sins, eventually involving the pursuing detectives in the execution of the final two sins. The complicated and shockingly disturbing methods of killing in Seven are among the most difficult ever put to screen, and the agonizing climax, calmly but devastatingly performed by Kevin Spacey in a heralded cameo role, is nothing less than traumatizing. Capitalizing on the notion that not only is society a potential loss, but the bad guy also sometimes wins, Seven is an interesting study in insanity, a topic debated considerably by the three leads in the final scene of the film. Everything sensory about Seven is dull by intention, its technical elements desaturated to emphasize a dirty environment, and the mixing of the music into that atmosphere is equally hazy. In between the use of Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie songs during the opening and closing credits sequences, Seven employs music very sparingly. The older, wiser detective played by Morgan Freeman is typically provided a faint mix of vintage jazz, heard in the mix as though it was quietly playing in another room during that character's moments of contemplation. The younger detective, embodied by Brad Pitt, doesn't receive any coherent musical identity. For the sinister and methodical rituals of Spacey's "John Doe," Fincher turned to an original score by Howard Shore (with whom the director would collaborate a few more times for later character-centered thrillers). Even here, though, the impact of the music is secondary (at best) compared to the intensity of the plot. There exist really only two modes of operation for Shore's underscore in Seven: the quietly mechanical primary theme for Doe and the alternately heightened, broad strokes of deep brass for scenes of elevated activity. Most of the film utilizes the first element, with the Doe theme mixed very minimally in between extended conversational scenes that feature no music at all.

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If Seven has a significant weakness, it is in the pacing of some of these slower scenes, and the application of Shore's churning score doesn't assist the film in overcoming the hiccups it experiences along its path to the inevitable. Like nearly every expression in the score, the composer identifies the theme with extremely low brass in slightly dissonant chord structures. There is significant menace to be heard in both of the two types of cues that Shore offers the film. If you're seeking much intelligence in the actual constructs underneath this brooding ambience, you might be disappointed. Shore does, likely intentionally, form the Doe theme using seven notes (two descending pairs followed by three pulsations), and, on occasion he uses a briefly rising alternative to this figure when Gwyneth Paltrow's character is on screen. The secondary motif in the score is a more primal rhythm extending from the three final notes of Doe's theme, methodically pulsating on the low brass with crashing piano, thumps from percussion, and muted trumpets creating disharmony with each calculated throb. This motif accompanies a few of the scenes of police movement in the middle of the film, but it makes the greatest impression in the electrical grid scene that closes the narrative. In both the car ride to this final location and in the crescendo to the conclusive execution, Shore's pounding and difficult score makes its most lasting impression. At the end of that scene, Shore hints at the development of a more melodramatic seven-note theme based on the same general movement of Doe's identity, but as in the rest of the work, this theme is never fully realized. Ultimately, this is a low-key, dissonant score that doesn't have much more than an ambient impact on the film. It's easy to get the impression that the movie would have functioned almost as well without any original music until the final fifteen minutes. The album is dissatisfying not only because the score really doesn't translate well into its own listening experience, but also because the aforementioned songs by Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie ("Closer" and "The Hearts Filthy Lesson," respectively) were not included by TVT Records on the product. After a collection of mostly incongruent vintage jazz and light rock, the album concludes with almost twenty minutes of Shore's score in two tracks. These two tracks conveniently divide the brooding, ritualistic Doe theme (in "Portrait of John Doe") from the agonizingly climactic pounding of the ensemble for the final scenes (in "Suite From Seven"), but they aren't worth the album alone for score collectors. Between the incredibly depressing personality of the score and the poor selection of songs for the remainder of the album, there's no reason to invest in this product. A 60-minute Concorde score-only bootleg can expand the misery. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Howard Shore reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.43 (in 23 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.25 (in 93,154 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.