The 1995 film Morgan Freeman never knew would be a hit: “I can’t tell you”
Morgan Freeman never claimed to be one of the most ingenious actors to ever walk the planet.
His career trajectory was always about trying to find the right script, and as long as he could see the character and the broad scope of what the role could be, he knew that he could bring something to anything that he was working on. But sometimes even the biggest stars can go for broke and still not know what they have on their hands once they start working on their classic films.
But when looking at any of Freeman’s roles, it’s hard to think that he knew that he was making the greatest films of all time. The Shawshank Redemption always tends to be picked out as the greatest movie ever made by many, but when telling the story of a pair of friends who learn from each other in prison and escape their fate, Freeman was just happy to play the role of Red down to the letter.
Because even when playing an escaped convict, Freeman always feels like the voice of reason in a lot of his movies. I know we all like to joke about how he has the voice of God these days, but even when he was just starting out getting jobs back in the day, you could still feel that he had the same kind of worldly wisdom that he has when he plays to type in some of his more recent roles.
At the same time, Freeman wasn’t afraid to switch things up, either. A lot of his best roles may have been slice-of-life stories or tales about someone’s moral struggles, but it was going to take someone strong to even consider working in a movie like Se7en. Denzel Washington had already passed on the script for being far too dark for what he wanted, but Freeman was at least willing to see what David Fincher’s vision was for the movie.
The entire movie hinged on one of the most tragic endings in a horror movie, but Freeman still had faith that the movie would reach people. It has some truly disturbing scenes that no one would have thought would be a Hollywood blockbuster, but even with how graphic some of the content could get, Freeman felt that he didn’t even know what he had on his hands when the film eventually blew up.
Anyone else can look at the movie now as a classic, but Freeman didn’t have those kinds of high expectations when the movie hit theatres, saying, “I never know why [it’s a hit]. For Se7en? I can’t tell you. We must get some vicarious thrill from seeing how the good guys outwit the bad guys. That was the ultimate part of that story: would we get to this guy before he stopped doing what he was doing?”
But the biggest gut punch of the film is the reason why people keep coming back for more. The entire climax hinges on the fact that the police win at a huge cost, and even if Freeman walks away as someone still willing to fight for what he believes in, seeing Brad Pitt go down the wrong path and let his anger get the better of him is something that you don’t tend to see in many big-budget Hollywood movies.
Most directors don’t normally get that cynical when it comes to their work, but Fincher wasn’t looking to be purely cynical. He wanted to show that sometimes the bad guys will have the upper hand, and even when you’re fighting as hard as you can, there are parts of human nature that tend to steer things in the wrong direction from time to time.
