The director Morgan Freeman called “extraordinarily good”
The biggest stars and the best actors are the ones who tend to work with the brightest filmmakers the industry has to offer, with Morgan Freeman having collaborated with many of the most notable directors in Hollywood during his distinguished career.
Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Rob Reiner, Brian De Palma, and Ben Affleck are just some of the acclaimed and awards-laden names Freeman has partnered up with, but one in particular was singled out for being extraordinary.
His directorial debut may not have gone according to plan when Alien 3 was crippled by studio interference and ultimately disowned, but David Fincher nonetheless announced himself as a talent firmly on the rise when his second feature, Seven, was released in 1995. Unburdened by studio politics and able to make exactly the kind of movie he wanted to make, the end result was one of the finest crime thrillers of the modern era.
Despite giving a rich and complex performance as William Somerset, Freeman admitted that the content didn’t appeal to him as an audience member. “There’s all this loss and angst and death and sense of helplessness in that movie,” he told Entertainment Weekly, “If I saw it in the theatre, I probably wouldn’t have liked it”.
On the other hand, Freeman had no issues praising it as “a great movie, well made, fabulous acting”, even if “it just made me feel so bad”. Turning his attention to the person who called the shots, the veteran branded Fincher as “an extraordinarily good director”, something that’s become common knowledge in the three decades since Seven after he established himself as one of the greats.
Freeman has spoken highly of Seven‘s technical and artistic merits, but his relationship to the plot itself is a lot more complicated after he’d previously branded it as “bleak, bleak, bleak”, labelling it “a story that borders on fantasy because we were in a non-identifiable place in almost a phantasmagorical situation”.
Coming hot on the heels of The Shawshank Redemption, a role that saw his abilities to play a wizened and kindly figure on full display, Seven marked a refreshing change of pace. Somerset might stay firmly on the right side of the law, but the grizzled detective still finds himself greatly affected on a personal and professional level by the harrowing crime scenes he’s forced to visit with Brad Pitt’s David Mills.
It’s an understated and nuanced turn that blends seamlessly into the rich atmosphere of the film, all marshalled by Fincher in what was his true breakthrough film following the Alien 3 debacle he’s been distancing himself from ever since. As an audience member, it wasn’t quite up Freeman’s street, as he made abundantly clear, but as a performer, it most certainly was.
