For the sinister and methodical rituals of Spacey's
"John Doe," Fincher turned to an original score by Howard Shore after
hearing his restrained suspense music for
The Silence of the
Lambs. The director would collaborate a few more times with Shore
for subsequent character-centered thrillers as well. 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. 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 hair-raising electrical grid scene that closes the
narrative.
In both the car ride to this final location in
Seven 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 an even 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. It's the primordial pounding of taiko drums on those
final notes of the Doe theme that prevail, as the action of the young
detective prove the worst inclinations of man as predicted. Ultimately,
this is a low-key, dissonant score that doesn't have much more than an
ambient impact on the film. While Shore does utilize crescendos in
abundance during the work, 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. Industrial sound effects would have
sufficed, essentially, up until that time. The brightest moment of
contrast in the score, the opening "The Last Seven Days" piece of
marginal optimism, was rejected in favor of a song placement. The
original 1995 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 inexcusably
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. A 60-minute Concorde score-only
bootleg expanded the misery in the late 1990's, and Shore's own label
eventually released a slightly rearranged version of those same contents
in 2016. It's a mind-numbing hour to tolerate on those longer
presentations, one that requires extreme patience and an intellectual
appreciation of an art form that can never yield a truly sane listening
experience.
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