Light and darkness. Joy and sorrow. Life
and death. How can the world have so many sets of two separate pieces of life
living in conjunction with one another? An analysis of the movie Seven Pounds reveals the complexity of
living in a world of duality. The thought-provoking story follows a man named
Ben Thomas who caused a car accident and killed seven lives, including his
fiancé. After the accident, Ben lives in hatred of himself, ridden with guilt.
The only way he feels he can find redemption is by saving the lives of seven
people. His undeniable brilliance
guides him in devising a systematic plan to save seven people and pay his debt.
He pays that debt in flesh. It begins with giving his brother a lung. Then the
story begins to snowball and he find the most deserving and in need people to
give his liver, kidney, bone marrow, his home, his eyes, and eventually his
heart to. Ben finds himself in a predicament of duality in that his whole world
is filled with contradictions and dual parts that are intertwined. Ben Thomas’
story is a story of dual parts in every aspect: his road to self-forgiveness,
his journey of life and death, and even the agent of his death.
Throughout the entire film there is an
undeniable theme of life and death. Ben was living his dream life. When his
world was shattered, he died. He caused the death of seven people. He then
saves the life of seven dying or unfulfilled lives. There is no greater
comparison than life and death and when those two parts of life meet, the
greatest paradox presents itself. Ben finds a woman named Emily Posa who has a failing
heart and is in need of a transplant. He gets to know her and with much
resistance, falls in love with her. Although she is dying, Emily is the epitome
of life. Throughout the film the décor
around Emily is always full and fruitful. In a scene where Emily is just returning
home from the hospital, the viewer sees her in her kitchen. The décor in this
scene is very symbolic of her personality. There is bright light coming in, a
view of bushes and flowers, and a counter top covered in food and other things
(Seven Pounds). It is apparent that
all scenes involving Emily are never empty; the space is always full. It shows
the duality of life and death through Emily because even though she is dying,
she is full of life. While on the other side of the spectrum, Ben is the
epitome of death. The scenes involving Ben are as empty as can be. In addition
there’s a constant theme of dark, moldy colors and rain, which show his depression
and sadness. In a behind the scenes video about the making of the film, Seven Views on Seven Pounds, the film designer,
J. Michael Riva described the way they set up the scenes with Ben in them, “Anything
involving Ben was about taking things away from the frame, making it empty,
making him alone” (Seven Views on Seven
Pounds). The reason it is so crucial and appropriate to make scenes of Ben
empty and lacking any décor is because it is symbolic of the way he is on the
inside. On the inside, Ben is already dead. Ben begins his journey to save
Emily and he begins to grow close to her. He helps her around the house and
takes care of her and they fall in love. Their relationship is basically life and death touching
hands. The film captures the romance in a scene where the viewer finds Ben and
Emily sitting together in a large wheatgrass filed. There is an extreme long shot to show the immensity of the
surroundings and to show just the couple alone. Then, the camera zooms in to
just the two. The lighting is bright and almost high-key and the focus is solely
on the actors while the grass protruding into the shot is blurred (Seven Pounds). The way this shot is filmed keeps the focus on the
characters while romanticizing the story. The fact that they are in an enormous
wheat grass field is congruent with the duality of life and death in the
characters. In literature, wheatgrass fields have been used to symbolize the
middle ground between life and death or earth and the afterlife. The scene shows
the irony and duality of two lovers who can’t live without the other dying. Ben
being death and Emily being life and the two being in an impossible romance,
give the story an added level of duality.
Ben
is a brilliant engineer, so it is fitting that he calculates his suicide down
to a science. He chooses a very particular being as the instrument of his
death. He has a strange fascination with box jellyfish, creatures whom happen
to be among the most venomous in the world. The jellyfish serves as a great symbol of duality in the
film. The jellyfish play a big role because not only does Ben keep one as a pet
but he uses it to commit his suicide in the end by dropping into a ice bath
where he sits and waits for medics to come a receive his last organs. There is
a scene where Ben narrates about his attractment to the jellyfish. The shot
shows Ben the first time he ever saw a box jellyfish; he is at the aquarium with
his father and brother and he presses his hands to the glass while he is captivated
watching the creatures swim. The lighting is dark so that the viewer just sees
the tank full of illuminecent jellyfish and the silhouettes of the characters (Seven Pounds). The way the shot is
filmed helps captures Ben’s relationship with the jellyfish. The fact that he
loves something that is so harmful shows the dual nature of Ben himself. The
jellyfish capture the duality of being simply beautiful and mesmerizing yet being
extremely lethal (Seven Pounds). Ben keeps a jellyfish as a pet. There is scene that uses an
over-the-shoulder shot of Ben sitting in the dark next to his pet jellyfish.
The scene is completely dark using mostly the light from the jellyfish to light
the right side of Ben’s face (Seven
Pounds). Pets are typically loving animals that are considered a part of
the family but Ben’s jellyfish serves the opposite purpose by being his pet but
also a killer, showing the dual nature of the jellyfish. When two so opposite features
come into one it captures the duality and the irony of the film while the
duality of beauty and cruelty are captured by the box jellyfish.
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