Se7en was one of those Fincher Films I hadn’t seen until sometime last year. Mostly due to the fact that, like most YouTube addicted kids in the mid 2010’s, I’d absorbed the plot – as well as the infamous twist – through countless top ten videos. Mills has his Cliff Notes for Dante’s Inferno, while I have my WatchMojo Top Tens for Fight Club and Se7en.

Needless to say, knowing everything going in did taint my first watch, as I found it frustrating that, for a detective film, the brash David Mills and older, wiser Somerset were always offended by each other even when they earnestly started to work together. On the surface, they seemed to show little to no growth.

Everything else about the film was wonderful: The forever rainy city, the gruesome crime scenes and disgraced actor Kevin Spacey’s unsettling performance were all top tier. Yet, the pain point of the film’s central relationship was forever in the back of my mind.

So, naturally I was a bit hesitant to see it at the Astor last Thursday, but it felt silly to miss out on a thirty year anniversary screening – especially with the promise of a 35mm print.

And it should surprise no one that having sat with the film for almost a year, and seeing it up on the big screen, something finally clicked up their in the front row balcony. The only thing feeling silly by the end of the film was me.

The plot has the usual hard boiled trappings of a detective noir: Somerset is on the verge of retiring from the homicide unit when he uncovers a series of murders connected to the Seven Deadly Sins. Hardened enough to know when to quit, he refuses the case, but when his younger partner, the out-of-town Detective Mills, gets assigned it instead, he decides to work alongside him in an effort to protect the young man from the horrors this case has in store for him.

However, what’s special about Se7en is Fincher’s use of the commonplace setting: the unforgiving, seeing it as a tool. He explores how our characters might go about communicating in a world that has taught them to remain distant.

Somerset is hated by his colleagues and put up with by friends for always caring about what happens after a case. What will happen to the orphan of murdered parents? Who are these people we’re looking at like bags of meat, what are their names, what did they do? Years of this has finally worn him down. His retirement is a means of escape, a refuge from “a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it were a virtue.” He’s stopped trying to help a city that keeps refusing to be saved; and if saving himself is the consolation prize, so be it.

But something changes when Mills enters the picture. He may be an experienced homicide detective for someone so young, but his rural cases are nothing compared to ravenous creeps of the big city. Somerset, faced with the possibility that Mills might be chewed up and spit back out as a carbon copy of himself, feels the need to help his partner. A paternal instinct kicks in for the old man: if he can’t save the city, he’ll at least save his partner.

But like most father’s, Somerset has a hard time showing his appreciation for Mills. “It’s easier to beat a child than it is to raise it.” he says to Mills over drinks. And while Somerset doesn’t accost Mills, he certainly berates and belittles him for having a short-temper and being a bit too eager to cause a fuss. But, eventually some of his old kindness shines through.

The library scene, which I once derided for making Mills’ involvement in the case fairly minimal, is powerful in it’s subtlety. Somerset uses small gestures, like his envelope of research for Mills or his insistence to hear the testimony of the nightclub hostage while sticking Mills with interrogating the owner, as a form of showing love or appreciation for his young partner.

In a way, Mills’ own constant chatter at crime scenes and his desperation to be a part of the investigations is his confused and often crude way of getting Somerset to open up more. The constant arguing, that feels like stagnant character development on a first watch, is Fincher’s way of showcasing the love languages of two people immersed in a city that has forgotten how to love.

John Doe meanwhile, is the killer that represents everything wrong with the city. If Somerset’s apathy makes him want to run away from problem and Mill’s makes him want to fight to clean it up, regardless of what people think, John’s apathy makes him want to destroy it. John sees sin in every man, woman and child. He will throw up on a man who speaks about the weather, only to laugh at his annoyance. His role as religious disciple is fitting, as he conduct his “work” with the same dispassionate judgement his creator passes onto him and all the other creatures who exist within the city walls.

Once Somerset and Mills pick up pieces of the puzzle left by John, the serial killer gains a vested interest in the pair for entirely different reasons. He finds Somerset equal in intellect, but his already defeated attitude inspires none of his sadistic tendencies. However, Mills is yet to be broken. Their is a hopeful spirit left in him yet to humble. So, his “surprise” is not shocking for it’s grotesqueness, it’s shocking because it was planned, right down to the second, despite knowing nothing of other people’s feelings, John knows exactly what buttons to push.

But why do I still feel hopeful after the ending of Se7en? Why does it make me hopeful for our own future despite the horrors that lie ahead? Because while, someone like Mills may break, his ideals live on in the reformed Somerset.

“You think you’re quitting because you believe these things you say,” he responds to Somerset in the bar, “I don’t. I think you wanna believe ‘em because you’re quitting. You want me to agree with you…but I won’t say that. I don’t agree with you. I do not. I can’t.”

In times of hardship, it’s much easier to run away from or to join in on the misery, but we must fight it, even if it doesn’t make a difference, because someday, to somebody it will!