The movie Ben Affleck called cinema’s greatest underrated masterpiece: “People don’t include it”
One of the strangest things about online culture is the number of people who operate under the assumption that Ben Affleck is an idiot until he proves them otherwise, which he’s got a habit of doing.
Obviously, he couldn’t have predicted that his lasting gift to the internet would be a never-ending supply of ‘Sad Affleck’ memes that revel in the misery etched on his face every time he’s spotted in public, but that’s probably the only one of his predictions that he’s gotten wrong.
The two-time Academy Award winner stated his case for how and why subscription-based models would be the future for both the music and movie industries as far back as 2003, years before Netflix moved online and Spotify launched, and it’s looking like he’ll be every bit as prescient about the scourge of AI.
He offered a lengthy explanation for why the doomsayers are wrong, and based on his history, he’ll no doubt be proven right. Admittedly, the only area where Affleck has shown repeated idiocy is in his career choices, because no smart man would think Gigli, Surviving Christmas, and Reindeer Games were good ideas, even if he was the bomb in Phantoms.
He’s still the youngest person to win a ‘Best Original Screenplay’ Oscar after taking to the stage to collect his prize at the tender age of 25, and since he played a bit of a dummy in Good Will Hunting, it’s stuck. The actor-turned-filmmaker is also a noted cinephile, even if his definition of “underrated” is up for debate.
Sharing a list of films that inspired him with Alamo Drafthouse, Affleck stated his case that one of the modern era’s greatest crime thrillers, which was also the breakthrough movie for a generational director, an Oscar-nominated picture, and a near-$330 million hit at the box office, hasn’t gotten its flowers.
“I think Seven is probably one of the great underrated kind of masterpieces,” he mused. “I think people don’t include it sometimes in the lists they make of great movies because it’s a serial killer movie, and people go, ‘It’s like horror’. It’s actually, I think, one of the best constructed movies ever made.”
“The screenplay, the execution, the performances, they all work beautifully in concert with one another,” the deposed Batman continued. “The acting is great. The plot and the reveal and the tension actually have a reveal and a point. There’s a denouement that’s incredibly resonant. It’s iconic. It’s stayed with us.”
All of the above are completely valid points, and if Seven isn’t a masterpiece, it’s one of the most compelling crime stories of the last three decades at the very least. Affleck had even more praise for his Gone Girl director, though, adding that David Fincher “is as good as anybody who’s ever done this job.” Again, that’s up for debate, but again, he’s definitely one of the modern greats.
