Film Quote of the Day: The Morgan Freeman Line From The 1995 Thriller That Redefined Movie Endings

I just got Se7en in ultra 4K, and I've been loving those sumptuous David Fincher frames that take you into one of the darkest murder stories ever. We've talked about how the moral of Se7en is that evil wins.

And today, I want to cover some of the dialogue that explicitly states that argument, snuck into the movie by the great Andrew Kevin Walker.

All of this is contained in a line delivered by Morgan Freeman’s weary Detective William Somerset. One that closes the movie and sums up everything we've seen up until that point.

Let's dive in.

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The Scene in Question

Up until the final moments, Se7en feels like a slow march into pitch-black darkness. You keep thinking they're going to catch this murderer and that everything is going to be okay.

I mean, we've grown to love Detectives Somerset and Mills (Brad Pitt). They have given everything, having spent the entire film chasing John Doe (Kevin Spacey), only for him to give himself up.

He shows up covered in blood, and that's when the dread hits you...whose blood is it?

John Doe leads our detectives into the middle of the desert, where a cardboard box is delivered, one that turns all the events we've seen before into a plot with a payoff.

That's when John Doe’s sick plan reaches its horrifying completion, and we hear "What's in the box?"

While that may be the movie's famous quote, what comes next is the heart.

Mills breaks, pulls the trigger, and becomes the final piece of Doe's twisted puzzle.

But as Mills is driven away in the back of a police cruiser, the camera lingers on Somerset. And he talks over the final scenes of the movie, reconciling everything that's happened at the same time as the audience.

“Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.”

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What The Quote Means

We've spent all the time watching this movie hoping for a happy ending. We now know that ending was cut off just like the head of Mill's wife. It might be in the box next to her.

Anyway, this quote is where Somerset sees the world as a rotting pit of apathy and cruelty. That's why at the start of the movie he wants to retire so badly.

And now, after seeing his young partner punished in ways he can't even imagine, you'd expect him to sink back into his old ways.

The job took everything from him, and yet Somerset still had one thing left to lose himself in after a lifetime of policework... his last sliver of hope.

This final quote is his acceptance of the dark reality of life. But also, attacking it.

He does this by acknowledging that he doesn't agree with the first part ("The world is a fine place") and emphasizing the second.

This guy knows that the world is a bad place.

But as a cop, maybe the only thing he will walk away from is the vision that, if he agrees with the second part, the world is "worth fighting for."

This statement completely flips Somerset's character arc.

Now, I don't know if we can assume he won't retire, but I do think we can assume this character will work very hard to make the world a better place after what he's seen.

Summing It All Up

Fincher had to fight the studio executives to keep Se7en’s infamous "head in a box" ending. They wanted there to be a much kinder world.

That quote at the end does not soften the blow; it just hits harder, as we imagine the despair of a man who's seen it all burn down in front of him and still wants to pick up the pieces because he needs to believe in something better than all of this horror.

That's what makes for an iconic line.