WI's Movie Moment: "Expectation vs Reality"

 Expectation vs Reality

Movie: "(500) Days of Summer "

Tom, goes to a party hosted by Summer. This is a while after they had broken up, and she invites him when they run into each other at a co-worker's wedding. In the scene, we see Tom heading out to Summer's party, but the screen is divided in half. The left side has a heading on the bottom that says, "Expectations." On the right says, "Reality." After getting along very well with Summer at the wedding, Tom thinks that maybe he'll get back together with her after that night. This is indicated by the narration at the beginning of the scene: "Tom walked to her apartment, intoxicated by the promise of the evening. He believed that this time, his expectations would align with reality."

In his expectations, he's greeted very warmly by Summer when he arrives, and spends the whole night talking to her exclusively, the two of them in their own little world as Summer ignores the rest of her company. But in reality, she gives him a stiff hug when he arrives, and makes small talk with him and her other guests. Expectation and Reality meet when Expectation shows Tom and Summer kissing in her apartment, while Reality shows Tom noticing Summer showing someone a ring...on a specific finger...on a specific hand.

It is at this point that Reality takes over Expectation. The camera dollies around the couple, and disappears behind a doorjamb while the Reality frame closes in on Expectation until the couple is completely gone. It's when Reality is the only frame that we see Summer is indeed wearing an engagement ring. All the while, a Regina Spektor song is playing in the background. The lyrics are so appropriate when they say: "It's all right  I'm the hero of the story, I don't need to be saved."

Tom leaves, unable to take the sight anymore, and as he walks away, he is silhouetted in the moonlight. The Los Angeles skyline and all the scenery in front of him changes to a pencil sketch, which then erases itself and Tom's silhouette is just a dark gray figure on a blank, light gray canvas. even though Tom and Summer are not together anymore, Tom still expects something to happen with her because of the chemistry that he thinks is still between them. The close up shot of Summer's hand with the engagement ring on her finger helps to create the feeling of complete devastation and heartbreak that Tom feels. Also, the animation at the end when Tom turns to just a blank gray figure further emphasizes his feeling of hopelessness and despair.

 Partygoer  : So Tom, what is it that you do?
Tom             : I uh, I write greeting cards.
Summer     : Tom could be a really great architect if he wanted to be.
Partygoer  : That's unusual, I mean, what made you go from one to the other?
Tom            : I guess I just figured, why make something disposable like a building when you can make something that last forever, like a greeting card.

Super Size Me(2004)

Super Size Me(2004)
A film of epic portions.
Directed by: Morgan Spurlock
Starring      : Morgan Spurlock
Genre        : Documentary
Runtime     : 100 minutes
WI's rating :7.9

Morgan Spurlock: Who's that?
[shows picture of Ronald McDonald]
Child: McDonald, Ronald McDonald.
Child: McDonald!
Morgan Spurlock: What does he do?
Child: He helps people at the cash register.
Child: He works at McDonald's. I love the pancakes and sausage!
Child: He brings everyone of his friends to McDonald's for a Happy Meal.
Morgan Spurlock: Where have you seen him?
Child: On television, on the commercials.
Child: He's the character that made McDonald's, and he does a lot of funny stuff on TV.

In "Super Size Me", a documentary from talented debut filmmaker Morgan Spurlock that manages to be both entertaining and horrifying, he attempts to draw a parallel between the fast food culture we live in and the rampant (and ever-increasing) rate of obesity in America. To do this, he launched into a little science experiment. A 33 year-old New Yorker in excellent health, he would eat nothing but McDonald's for an entire month, to gauge the effects on his body. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner at McDonald's and whenever they asked him to supersize, he would have to accept. Before starting, he consulted three doctors, a cardiologist, a gastroenterologist, and a general practitioner, all of whom said this experiment obviously wouldn't be GOOD for him, but that the damages would be minimal.The problems he exhibits after 3 weeks on this diet are NOT unique, they are the ones that people around the country are exhibiting in spades: weight gain, fatty liver, depression, inactivity. The results were pretty shocking. Spurlock gained almost 30 pounds (over 10 in the first week), saw his cholesterol skyrocket, and experienced frequent nausea, chest pains, mood swings and loss of sex drive. During this month he also drove around the country, interviewing several different people on the topic (including a "Big Mac enthusiast" who has eaten over 19,000 Big Macs). His research on our fast food culture definitely yields some interesting information, especially when he interviews a group of 1st-graders, and more of them can identify Ronald McDonald than Jesus or George Washington.


His good humour makes the film but it is the documentary rather than the gimmick that kept me watching. The facts on obesity do speak for themselves and they are frightening and all the more so when you actually sit and think about what you eat – sweets, colas, ready meals, crisps, processed foods; whether it is salt, saturated fats or sugar, any of these foods spells trouble if they are not part of a balanced diet. My only fear of this film is that many viewers will look at McDonalds and say 'they are to blame, lets get them' and simply ignore that it is very easy to eat an unhealthy diet – go to any supermarket and you'll find 'easy' food served up quickly but without the things your body needs. I was challenged because I can easily veg out for several days and be too tired to cook decent food and this reminded me why I need to – hopefully many viewers will take that challenge and not just turn from one fatty diet (McDonalds) to another (ready meals).

McDonald's alone operates more than 30,000 joints in 100 countries on 6 continents and feeds more than 46 million people in the world every day. That's more than the entire population of spain. In United State alone, McDonald's accounts for  43%  of total fast food market. They're everywhere, wall mart's, airports, rest stops, gas stations, train stations, shopping malls, department stores, amusement parks, even hospitals.

American fast food chains are notorious for serving processed food with an incredible high fat high sugar content which probably won't do you any good health wise . But they also serve food in very large portions which is also very good value for money . Think about it for a moment - You go into a fast food chain with a couple of dollars and have a meal high in fat and sugar but the meal itself is relatively cheap . Would you rather spend 50 dollars getting a single meal in an expensive restaurant and leave the table still wanting ? I think most people visit a fast food chain to kill the hunger pangs and still have enough money to pay the bills . Watching Spurlock vomit because he's eaten too much is a kind of back handed compliment to a certain food chain for selling extra large portions.

Morgan Spurlock: Over the course of McDiet, I consumed over thirty pounds of sugar. That's an average of a pound of sugar a day. I also took in 12 pounds of fat.

Slumdog Millionaire(2008)

Slumdog Millionaire(2008)
What does it take to find a lost love? A. Money B. Luck C. Smarts D. Destiny
Directed by: Danny Boyle
Starring      : Dev Patel, Freida Pinto
Genre        : Drama
Runtime     : 120 minutes
WI's rating : 8.6

Police Inspector: [whispering] Doctors... Lawyers... never get past 60 thousand rupees. He's won 10 million.
[pause]
Police Inspector: What the hell can a slumdog possibly know?
Jamal Malik: [quietly] The answers.
[spits out blood]
Jamal Malik: [quietly and gently] I knew the answers.

The film begins as Jamal (Skins' Dev Patel) is under interrogation by Mumbai police for cheating on India's version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, being only one question away from winning it all. As the inspector says, even doctors and lawyers cannot come close to the 20m rupee prize, and so Jamal, having grown up on the streets of Mumbai, cannot possibly know these things. As Jamal tries to avoid further torture, he begins to explain to the police how he knew each of the answers. Flashbacks present Jamal's boyhood and explain how he got to the show. At the centre of his journey is his brother, Salim, and a girl, Latika, who is left a homeless orphan after an attack that took Jamal's mother as well. After running from a man who exploits the trio for labour, Jamal replays the incident when Latika left his life when she was unable to catch a moving train. His uncertainty of her fate on the streets of Mumbai and his intense desire to see his first and only love again lead him to the interrogation room where the film began.

Police Inspector: Money and women. The reasons for make most mistakes in life. Looks like you've mixed up both.

"Slumdog Millionaire" is very tasteful in almost every respect. The romance scenes are either beautifully understated (most of the scenes with them as children/young teenagers, and a couple after that) or fantasy melodrama like much of the stuff near the end of the film (although the actual final pre-credit shot itself is again, a tender and beautiful moment). I have no issues with the fantasy melodrama however, because most of the film is done in that tone. Even the very realistic and brutally true-to-life scenes involving the raids of Muslim sections of the slums by Hindus, and the luring of children to a life of begging on the streets (for gangsters and criminals) in exchange for accommodation and food are done in a manner that is both tastefully evocative of reality while fitting in tone with much of the rest of the film, which has a more hopeful tone. It sounds improbable, but that's what the screenwriter and director(s) achieve here. The film doesn't strive for 'gritty realism', but everything in the film (yes, everything) is perfectly evocative of reality. The trouble with 'gritty realism' is that it often is gritty and hopeless in a way life rarely is to most of us, and is actually laughable if done wrong. Jamal's flashbacks to the begging end in misery, but before that we get the happiness and relief of slum life that these children felt. The raid is unrelentingly horrifying, but it is a haunting memory rather than something the film dwells on without stopping. The film also gives us scenes of comedic escapism which are still within the realm of plausibility as well. "Slumdog Millionaire" is also a drama exposing the tragic effects of poverty in gigantic Indian cities like Mumbai that is also fused with a modern day Indian fairytale. Jamal Malik is a young man on India's "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" and is a question away from one million dollars when he's arrested on suspicion of cheating. Because Jamal is from the slums of India and has no educational background, it seems entirely improbable if not impossible that Jamal could make it this far, but each question is connected with distinct and sometimes painful memories for Jamal. It's as if he is destined to win, even though he only went on the show to impress a girl he has loved his whole life, Latika.

FYI
-The actor whose autograph young Jamal gets is Amitabh Bachchan. Amitabh Bachchan is a very real, and very famous Indian actor, the original host of the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (1998) , and also the father-in-law of Aishwarya Rai
-The pile of excreta that the young Jamal jumps into was made from a combination of peanut butter and chocolate.

-A.R. Rahman took just 20 days to compose the entire soundtrack, including Jai Ho.

-"Slumdog Millionaire" dominated oscar in 2009 by winning 8 nominations, including Best Achievement in Cinematography; Best Achievement in Directing; Best Achievement in Editing; Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score; Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song; Best Achievement in Sound; Best Motion Picture of the Year; Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published, ditching "Curious Case of Benjamin Button" with 3 nominations.

Memento(2000)

Memento(2000)
"Some memories are best forgotten "
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring      : Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss
Genre        : Crime, Mystery
Runtime     : 113 minutes
WI's rating : 9.4

Leonard Shelby: I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can't remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. Do I believe the world's still there? Is it still out there?... Yeah. We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I'm no different.

The film loops backwards episodically to present a series of revelations about the main character, Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), about the motives of his antagonists 'Teddy' (Joe Pantolino) and 'Natalie' (Carrie Ann Moss), and about the nature of Lenny's memory-loss condition. His condition 'isn't amnesia' (or so Lenny tells everyone he meets) but rather such severe short term memory loss that he is unable to assimilate and retain experience - in other words, to make new memories. Consequently, Lenny's identity, or more precisely his self-knowledge, is arrested at the moment he received a blow to his head while trying to stop intruders from raping his wife.

---

Leonard Shelby: Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.

Importantly, Memento's regressive plot structure is punctuated and counter-pointed by a series of noirish black and white flashbacks in which Lenny relates to an anonymous phone caller the story of Sammy Jankis, another sufferer of short term memory loss who, ironically, was Lenny's big case in his pre-trauma life as an insurance investigator. Unlike the main narrative, the Sammy sequences are told in chronological order, strategically intersecting and organizing the narrative as it wends its way backwards to the moment when Lenny decides to set in motion the data trail that will lead to the murder we see him commit in the film's opening sequence. In addition, Lenny's reconstruction of the Sammy sequences is itself dreamlike and unreliable since he attributes to Sammy characteristics that (if we can believe Teddy, an utterly corrupt cop) are Lenny's own.

Leonard Shelby: I meet Sammy through work. Insurance. I was an investigator. I'd investigate the claims to see which ones were phony. I had to see through people's bullshit. It was useful experience, 'cause now it's my life.

This is a film you definitely need to pay attention to, leave for ten minutes and you may find yourself lost. This film is quite different to others in the way it is shown. Instead of following in a chronological order which is easy to follow, this goes in reverse. Each colour scene is before the one you just saw, there are also black and white scenes which are in chronological order though. This definitely made the film sometimes difficult to follow and confusing, but that adds to the overall enjoyment of the film. It doesn't just improve the film by making it more confusing, it makes it better for reasons I can't really say other than it helps in terms of the characters and makes for one hell of a climax.
So, if you watch this movie and it confuses you the first or even the second time, I can assure you that is how you are meant to feel, confused. If you hated watching ‘Memento' the way Christopher Nolan intended, then I can only recommend that you get a hold of the DVD and watch it in chronological order, as it will really help you. Memento also shows how bad ‘mental disease' patients can be abused by healthy people and what lengths sick patients will go to try and keep ‘sane'. Also, if a movie makes you think, then in some way it has been successful in doing something that many movies do not do – making you think. Those sorts of cinematic experiences are the ones that we need to cherish for life, as they are few and far between. Memento is one such experience.

 FYI
 -The camera Leonard Shelby uses is a Polaroid 690.

 -The medical condition experienced by Leonard in this film is a real condition called Anterograde Amnesia - the inability to form new memories after damage to the hippocampus. During the 1950s, doctors treated some forms of epilepsy by removing parts of the temporal lobe, resulting in the same memory problems.
 -In one scene, Leonard quickly passes in front of a comic book store. The Batman logo is displayed prominently on the store's window. Christopher Nolan later directed Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight

Spoiler Alert
read it for your own risk
 Leonard found his wife being raped and murdered, and the killers incapacitated him and gave him short term memory loss. Unfortunately, his wife didn't die from the assault, so she lived in guilt. At the end (beginning?) of the movie, 'Teddy' tells Leonard that Sammy Jankis never existed. At the end of the film "Teddy" actually mentions this when he says something like "you are Sammy Jankis". Everything that we see happening to Sammy Jankis happened to Leonard in real life. So technically, Leonard killed his wife by injecting her with too much Insulin, but it was an accident.But due to Leonard's short term memory loss, he still believes that his wife died at the hands of a rapist / serial killer. So Teddy keeps finding low-life people for Leonard to murder so that he can feel compensated for his wife's 'tragic death.' But, Leonard finds out about Teddy's scheme, and before he forgets, he sets up Teddy as the next person to kill, hence the reason that in the opening of the film, Leonard kills Teddy and takes a picture of it. You have to assume that even though Leonard will forget about killing all of his victims, he'll have the picture to remind him that his task was completed, and that he can move on.

Forrest Gump(1994)

Forrest Gump(1994)
"Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." 
Direct by      :  Robert Zemeckis
Starring        :  Tom Hanks
Genre          :   Drama, Comedy
Runtime       : 142 minutes
WI's rating   : 8.6

Forrest gump: My momma always said,"Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

Forrest Gump(Tom Hanks), not the sharpest tool in the box, his I.Q. is right below the average scores. But his mama(Sally Field) believes that her boy has the same opportunities as anyone else and lets Forrest know that there's nothing that could hold him back. As a boy he is put into braces for his legs since he has a crooked back and really doesn't have too many friends. When he gets on a school bus for his first day of school, NO ONE will let him sit next to them. This scene is so heart breaking until you hear a little angel's voice "You can sit here if you want". Jenny, Forrest's best friend and crush, she looks so incredibly innocent and you love her because her and Forrest are like pea's and carrots. But we find out that there is an extremely unfortunate side to her life, she has a father that's "always kissing and touching her and her sisters". Forrest just assumes that it's a father's love since he doesn't have a dad that could show him that it's wrong.

Forrest Gump: Will you marry me?
[Jenny turns and looks at him]
Forrest Gump: I'd make a good husband, Jenny.
Jenny Curran: You would, Forrest.
Forrest Gump: ...But you won't marry me.
Jenny Curran: [sadly] ... You don't wanna marry me.
Forrest Gump: Why don't you love me, Jenny?
[Jenny says nothing]
Forrest Gump: I'm not a smart man... but I know what love is.

Forrest and Jenny together walk every day from school and when these kids start throwing rocks at Forrest calling him stupid, Jenny just tells Forrest "Run, Forrest! Run!". He miraculously breaks the braces off his legs and run like the wind blows. Forrest meets many celebrities from his life that just happened to be there: Elvis Presley visited his house before hitting it big, President Kennedy honored him with a all American football award, President Johnson who honored him with a medal of honor for his actions in Vietnam, President Nixon(in which Forrest happens to discover a problem in the Water Gate Hotel because some people seem to be flashing lights around), and John Lennon through a talk show to talk about his medal of honor.

[Forrest Gump referring to Apple Computer]
Forrest Gump: Lieutenant Dan got me invested in some kind of fruit company. So then I got a call from him, saying we don't have to worry about money no more. And I said, that's good! One less thing.

Forrest meets some interesting people along the way too that are even better than these celebrities combined; Bubba his Vietnam war friend who dreams of owning a shrimp boat one day and was born with big gums. He is just so wonderful and charming and won't stop talking about shrimp. lieutenant Dan, a leader of Forrest's army in Vietnam who gets saved by Forrest during a huge attack and looses his legs as a result. Lieutenant Dan was by far my favorite character, he has so much pride and wants to die in Vietnam due to his family history tradition of dying in every single American war. He and Forrest make quite a pair. And of course there's Jenny, a very tragic figure, she gets more mean as she grows up because she knows that Forrest loves her, in some ways you can't blame her really. She was obviously abused and I think she felt that Forrest was too good for her or that he couldn't really give her the love she wanted. Because Forrest Gump is one ridiculous, unbelievable joke followed by another, and when Forrest is teaching Elvis how to dance, giving Lennon the idea for
"Imagine", investing his money on Apple(which he thought was a fruit company), wiping his face on a clean shirt and making a smiley face with the dirt by accident.

don't worry be happy

Forrest Gump: In the land of China, people hardly got nothing at all.
John Lennon: No possessions?
Forrest Gump: And in China they never go to church.
John Lennon: No religion too?
Dick Cavett: Ah. Hard to imagine.
John Lennon: Well it's easy if you try, Dick.

What is the message of Forrest Gump? Stripped to its purest essence, this movie is about loyalty and devotion, particularly to the ones in our lives we love and care about. These are the human values being reinforced. Loyalty. Devotion. Forrest Gump embodies loyalty and devotion. To his mama. To his good best buddy Bubba. To the love of his life, Jenny. To his leader, Lt. Dan. And in the end to Forrest Jr. One by one and all together Forrest sticks by and takes care of his family, friends, and loved ones. This is the thread running through the entire story. This is what carries Forrest to all of the remarkable places he goes along the way.The use of a mentally challenged man as the leading man is a conceit, used to illustrate the point that loyalty and devotion are the most important things in life, trumping everything else. It drives home the point that nothing else really matters anywhere near as much. Indeed, it drives it home with blunt force. Maybe it drives it home too hard for such a simple little point.

(500) Days of Summer(2009)

(500) Days of Summer(2009)
This is not a love story. This is a story about love.
Directed by: Marc Webb
Starring      :  Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
genre          : Romance, Drama, Comedy
Runtime      : 95 Minutes
WI's rating  : 8.4








One of 2009's best films, (500) Days of Summer proved there is a way to bring something fresh and new to one of the most cliche and often frustrating genres – the romantic comedy.Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), whose job writing greeting cards gets a lot more exciting when he meets his new coworker, Summer Finn(Zooey Deschanel). She's adorable, she's cool, she's funny and she likes the same music as Tom – obviously, she's perfect but she didn't want to get a serious relationship with people.

Summer: [Tom is listening to headphones in an elevator with Summer. She notices the music] I love the Smiths.
Tom: Sorry?
Summer: I said I love the Smiths.
Summer: [they stare at each other for a moment] You... You have good taste in music.
Tom: [repeating after her] You... like the Smiths?
Summer: [singing] To die by your side, such a heavenly way to die.
[speaking]
Summer: I love em.
Tom: [elevator stops, Summer leaves while Tom remains dumbfounded] Holy shit.

---

 Tom: What happens if you fall in love?
Summer: Well, you don't believe that, do you?
Tom: It's love. It's not Santa Claus.

Soon, Tom was sure that Summer was the woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life. Although Summer did not believe in relationships or boyfriends – in her assertion, real life will always ultimately get in the way – Tom and Summer became more than just friends. Through the trials and tribulations of Tom and Summer's so-called relationship, Tom could always count on the advice of his two best friends, McKenzie (Geoffrey Arend) and Paul (Matthew Gray Gubler). However, it is Tom's adolescent sister, Rachel (Chloe Moretz), who is his voice of reason.

Rachel Hansen: Just because she likes the same bizzaro crap you do doesn't mean she's your soul mate.

Romantic comedies are almost all aimed at women, and thus are mostly told from a woman's point of view. That being the case, it's surprisingly refreshing to have one told from the point of view of a young male. And many male viewers will empathize with Tom and the way it's so easy to be absolutely sure you've met "The Girl of Your Dreams," even when there are obvious signs that things can and will go sour.

Tom: It's official. I'm in love with Summer.
[while Montage of Summer plays]
Tom: I love her smile. I love her hair. I love her knees. I love how she licks her lips before she talks. I love her heart-shaped birthmark on her neck. I love it when she sleeps.

The success of the film derives from its honesty. In a time where Hollywood is spewing out fantastical ideas of the modern romance with films like Twilight and Dear John, (500) Days of Summer is a breath of fresh air. The writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, put together scenes that are so authentic that it makes you wonder why they aren't put on screen more often. The relationship starts awkwardly, with Tom expressing a curious shyness and fear of destruction that accompanies those first conversations with a new love. The degradation of the relationship never feels forced or sudden; rather Summer drifts from Tom organically making Tom's ultimate heartbreak all the more realistic.

Tom: People don't realize this, but loneliness is underrated

Another key component is the film's healthy sense of humor. There are certainly genuine, heartfelt moments, but the film never wallows in misery or over sentimentality. Or perhaps it's more correct to say that when there are moments that are overly sentimentalized, it's purposeful and shown in a clever manner – we're seeing how Tom is building up moments in his mind in a way that doesn't really connect to reality, in the way people do when they're so deeply and desperately in love.

Seven (1995)

Seven(1995)
Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Wrath , Pride, Lust
Directed by: David Fincher
Starring      : Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt
Runtime     : 127 minutes
WI's Rating: 9.1




William Somerset(Morgan Freeman) is  as senior police who was preparing to retire and leave the horrors of the city while David Mills (Brad Pitt) is a brash, hot-headed rookie cop who believes his big break lies in the murky, seedy unnamed metropolis. Amidst some cynicism, Somerset takes on Mills as a partner for his last days. When two murders occur within two days of each other the duo realize that a serial killer is murdering his victims in accordance with the seven deadly sins: gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy and wrath. What follows is a terrifying and disturbing story of the dark side of human nature. As the title, situation in this movie occurs in 7 days and 7 deadly sins(Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Wrath , Pride, Lust). the victim was murdered in uncommon ways, like a model who proud of her beauty death died with her face cut.

The two detectives enjoy an uneasy relationship with no real friendship ever striking up between them. The older Somerset is educated, astute and gives the impression of being emotionally burnt out. Mills, who has no respect for Somersets methodical investigating gets excited at the thought of solving a murder and firmly believes that the good guys will win eventually. The further we get into the action, the might of the evil that they face pushes both men beyond their limits.

William Somerset: I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue.
David Mills: You're no different. You're no better.
William Somerset: I didn't say I was different or better. I'm not. Hell, I sympathize; I sympathize completely. Apathy is the solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work

The Most disturbing message that Seven puts across, is that the fight against evil is destined to be a Pyrrhic victory. But regardless the only thing we can do is fight on whatever the cost. We have no other choice.

Spoiler alert
Read for your own risk
The killer (Kevin Spacey) who name himself as John Doe offers to take Mills and Somerset to the location of the sixth and seventh victims. When they arrive at the barren outdoor location, a delivery van drives up and drops off a box containing Mills' wife's head(Gwyneth Paltrow). John Doe kills her, fulfilling the sin of ENVY because he envied Detective Mills' "simple" life He hoped that in turn Mills would then kill him, fulfilling the final sin, WRATH (which also makes sure John is punished by death for his sin). Mills is technically not punished by death for his sin, but he is obviously left a broken man (which is probably the life he is 'allowed to live', to which John Doe was referring in the car).