In
Seven Pounds, a film by Grant
Nieporte, Ben (Tim) Thomas engineers an incredible plan to change seven
people’s lives for the better in a very unusual way after ending seven others
in an unexpected tragedy. Seven Pounds
is a film by Grant Nieporte that follows the life of Ben Thomas, an MIT
graduate that works for NASA. One night, as Ben is driving home with his wife,
he looks at a text rather than watching the road he is driving on. He begins to
drive on the wrong side of the road without noticing; however a car honks at
him after they almost collide. The honk makes him look up and he swerves out of
the way of that car, only causing him to fishtail and end up hitting another
van full of 6 people. Overall, he kills seven people this night, including his
new wife, which changes the rest of his life dramatically. From then on he
decides to help seven people by donating organs so that he can save their lives,
which means that in the end he must take his own. The viewer gets hints at what
Ben is doing throughout the film, however it isn’t until the end that the
viewer discovers all seven people that Ben donated organs to and what the
organs are. First, Ben gives his kidney to George, a hockey coach that had a
difficult during his life but remains a good person the entire time. Ben’s real
name is actually Tim, however he stole his brother Ben’s identity in the
beginning of the film and is never called Tim during the film except by his
brother. Although Tim steals his brother’s identity, Tim gives one of his lungs
to Ben which isn’t found out until the end of the film. Holly, a social worker
that helps Ben later in the film, is given a liver. About half way into the
film, Ben asks Holly for the name of someone that needs help and she tells Ben
about Connie, a struggling woman who has an abusive boyfriend. Ben helps her
out by giving Connie his beach house that she takes her family to, leaving
behind no trace for her boyfriend to find them. Near the end of the film, Ben
sees a young boy named Nicholas that needs bone marrow and Ben gives him the
marrow because he sees how good the child is and wants him to grow up and have
a good life. Finally, Ben commits suicide in the end and leaves a note for the doctors
so that they end up giving his eyes to a blind man named Ezra and a woman named
Emily that he grows very close to as the film progresses. This connection of
life and death being connected is a major theme throughout the film and helps
to create a compelling storyline that pulls the viewer’s attention in such a
drastic way that it brings about many different emotions. Through analysis of
this film, the viewer is able to discover these many underlying themes in the
film. Life and death appear to be opposites, however both are connected so
deeply that only through experiencing the death of someone can a human being
even begin to understand the connection that life and death share.
Sound is a
major aspect of film that helps the viewer to connect with a film and feel
emotions that incorporate the theme of life and death being intertwined. In the
end of the film, Ben unfolds his plan to save Emily’s life by getting into a
bath tub with his box jellyfish and committing suicide. When Emily is asleep
getting Ben’s heart placed where her heart used to be, the sound is a flat line
on a heart monitor that occurs when the heart is not pumping. The music is
completely silent other than the flat line, until the heart starts pumping and
the machine makes beeping sounds. In the film, the shot has racking focus from
Ben’s heart being carried by the doctor and then onto Emily’s face as she is
lying down on the hospital bed. This scene is overlapped with the sound of a
flat line on a heart monitor. The flat
line eventually ends as the heart starts beating, recognized by the beeping
sound on the monitor. This scene represents the connection between life and
death because Ben dies in order to give Emily his heart so that she can live.
Without Ben giving up his life, Emily would not have lived much longer and Ben
would have been depressed because he got close to her and she died when he
could have saved her life. He loves her much more than he does himself, which
is what brings him to commit suicide in order to give Emily his heart so that
she can live longer. She is also the seventh person that he donates an organ
to, which helps him commit suicide because even though he ended seven people’s
lives, he fixed the lives of seven others. Also, through the racking focus, the
viewer realizes that it is Ben’s heart on the tray and they are about to place
it into Emily. Earlier in the film, Ben gives bone marrow to a young boy named
Nicholas that he found at the same hospital Emily goes to. He notices that the
boy is struggling with depression and wants him to have a longer, more
fulfilled life, so he donates bone marrow as he goes through a depressed state
while thinking about the rest of his plan to end up committing suicide. Ben is
shown on a hospital bed, face down, as the doctor sticks a long needle into
him. He bites the pillow and begins yelling with a medium close up shot that
pans up to the doctor. Through the use of a medium close up, the director is
able to make the viewer feel Ben’s pain as well as connect with the emotions he
is feeling about the rest of his life. By panning up, the director helps show
the viewer what is occurring in the scene. The main aspect is that the shot
begins with Ben, allowing the viewer to understand the pain that Ben is going
through, not only from the bone marrow transplant, but also in his own life
from killing seven people. Finally, in the end of the film, Ben is lying in bed
kissing Emily before he commits suicide. During this scene, an oddly happy yet
depressed piano song plays with an off note key. After Ben gives his heart to
Emily and his eyes to Ezra another scene plays where Ezra and Emily meet each
other for the first time. The same off key song plays when they meet each other
and it continues playing until the scene fades out and the movie is over. The
final shot of the movie shows Emily and Ezra hugging in a medium long shot, as
Emily cries. This scene is one of the best representations of how connected
life and death are because if Ben had not committed suicide and died then they
might not be alive and wouldn’t have the organs that Ben donated to them. Their
lives would not be as enhanced as they were from Ben’s organs, yet he still had
to die in order to give them the organs. They were two of the main characters
throughout the film because Ben got the closest with them. He wanted to see how
good of a person both of them were and after finding out he decided he loved
them enough to end his own life in order to benefit theirs. The off key piano
song in the background enhances this scene because it sounds like a very happy
song, but there is one note that’s slightly off, causing the song to sound
depressed at the same time. It shows that nothing can be perfect because even
though the song is happy, it is sad, while in order for Ezra and Emily to be
happier from their lives, it required Ben to die which wasn’t what either of
them wanted, however the connection of life and death means that nothing can be
perfect like they want. Nothing can be perfect due to the fact that life and
death are interconnected which can be seen through the use of sound in this
film.
The editing
of this film is a necessary aspect in order to unfold the diegesis of the
connection between life and death. When Ben moves into the motel that he
eventually commits suicide in, he brings in a giant water tank and places a box
jellyfish into the tank. As Ben pours water into the tank, the editing goes to
a flashback where Ben is a child with his father and brother in front of a
giant tank of water at an aquarium. His father is telling him about how the box
jellyfish is the most poisonous jellyfish in the entire ocean. During the
flashback, there is a zooming shot that ends with a close up of Ben as a child
with a close up of a box jellyfish in the giant aquarium tank next to him. Ben
has his hands on the window and is staring in awe at the jellyfish as it swims
towards him, with very blue colors filling the entire screen, lighting up Ben’s
face with a blue color. This scene has multiple aspects to it that create the
diegesis, one of which is the blue lighting. Throughout the film, there is
constantly blue lighting around Ben, specifically the same color as the ocean.
The reason for this is that it foreshadows to the fact that Ben ends up committing
suicide through the use of the jellyfish, a creature that lives in the ocean.
The parallel meaning with this is that Ben has a beach house where he goes frequently
to swim in the ocean. Also, the fact that Ben is staring into the creature that
ends up killing him in the end of the film creates the diegesis because by
looking closely at the shot, the viewer discovers that he is having a deep
connection by touching the blue glass of the tank which symbolizes him touching
the jellyfish like he does during his death. The beautiful box jellyfish
symbolizes life because the way that it floats in the beautifully blue ocean,
yet at the same time it is the most poisonous jellyfish and ends up killing
Ben, which shows the connection between life and death in the box jellyfish. Another
parallel with colors in the movie is the salmon color of fabric. During the
flashbacks of Ben’s wife dying, she wears a salmon colored dress. Then, later
in the film, when Emily and Ben have their intimate connection, the bed sheets
are the same salmon color as they talk about what if they had children together
and got married. Finally, when Ben is lying in the bath tub getting killed by
the jellyfish, he is wearing a salmon colored shirt that matches the rest of
the fabrics with a salmon color. When Ben is lying in bed with Emily after
their intimate connection, the shot is a close up of their faces talking, with
a small gap between them for the viewer to notice the salmon colored bed sheets
they are lying on. Both Emily and Ben are saying what if statements, such as
what if they had children and got married which can’t come true because of her
heart condition and she might be dying soon. The parallel editing of this color
in every scene with death and life connects various parts of the film. First,
there is death when Ben’s wife is wearing the dress, lying dead on the road.
Then, there is life when Emily and Ben are in bed together because they just
had an intimate connection with one another and are clearly happy to be
together. Finally, as Ben commits suicide he is wearing the salmon color which
symbolizes the connection between life and death because although he is dying,
he will be giving life to Emily. This salmon color relates all of these aspects
of the film and creates connections that are hard to notice, however are an
important part of the diegesis because they show the connection in an
underlying way. Finally, parallel editing is used in the sequence where Ben is
committing suicide. The shots change very rapidly from scenes where Ben is
getting into a car crash and killing seven people and the scene where he is
committing suicide by getting into the tub with the jellyfish. As he first gets
stung the scene changes to when the two cars hit, and then as he gets attacked
by the poison the scene shows the car crash occurring, and finally when he dies
in the tub it switches to him lying next to his dead wife in the road after the
car crash. One of the main shots of Ben during the parallel editing is a bird’s
eye long shot of him lying in the bath tub with the jellyfish, intertwined with
close ups of his face as he struggles with pain. And then a very low-key shot
when his wife dies during the car crash. Through parallel editing, the diegesis
of the film unfolds because the viewer gets to see what actually happened to
his wife and why he is committing suicide to save Emily’s life. The editing
connects all of the scenes together to show that the death of his wife is so
important to Ben that he needs to end his own life in order to save the life of
another woman that he cares about very deeply. By ending someone else’s life,
he took on the task of helping seven other people’s lives and he got so close
to Emily that he knows he needs to end his life so that he can save hers and
hopefully help himself overcome the fact that he killed seven people. This is
the main underlying theme of the film and through parallel editing it all
unfolds and the viewer discovers how life and death are so interconnected that
one cannot exist without the other.
The most
important aspect of this film, in terms of camera use, is mise-en-scene which
creates the film in such a way that every single shot helps the diegesis to
unfold in some way. The film starts out with Ben calling Ezra and yelling very
rude remarks towards him to see if Ezra is a good person. The shots change
between Ezra working at his desk job and Ben in his messy house yelling at Ezra
after finding out that he is a blind vegan. One shot shows Ben sitting down in
his apartment with medical books and papers scattered everywhere as he stares
at the phone before calling Ezra. The shot is a medium long shot that has dim
lighting with books and papers scattered everywhere around Ben. The fact that
there are books scattered everywhere and the lighting is dim is constantly
shown throughout this film behind Ben which creates the idea that his life isn’t
very alive, while the shots of Emily always have color and life behind them.
His shots are always dim and this one has scattered papers which show that his
life is hectic. The shot sets up the phone call between Ben and Ezra, and
although the scene seems very negative, it is actually full of life because Ben
needs to find out if Ezra is a good person before Ben can give Ezra his eyes.
The shot is filled with death looking aspects everywhere, yet in the end it
helps out Ezra’s life in a fantastic way. Later in the film, a flashback shows
when Ben first sees the box jellyfish which will end up killing him in the end
of the film. After the flashback, the box jellyfish is first seen in Ben’s
apartment. The racking focus shot pans from the box jellyfish in Ben’s room to
Ben’s best friend Stuart. The shot is filled with the color blue and the
lighting is dark behind Stuart’s body. Similar to the shot where Ben is a child
and looking at the box jellyfish for the first time, this shot shows the box
jellyfish in Ben’s room for the first time with the same blue color. The blue
color is similar to the ocean, as well as Ezra’s eyes. The ocean symbolizes how
Ben dies because he dies from one of the most poisonous creatures in the ocean,
and he always swims in the ocean next to his house, creating a parallel. The
color symbolizes his death, while also being beautiful and representative of
life because although Ezra is blind, his eyes are a very beautiful blue color,
similar to the ocean, and in the end he can see through his eyes because Ben
donates them to him, which enhances Ezra’s life. This color represents the
death of Ben while also the enhancement of Ezra’s life. The jellyfish also
represents the connection between life and death because it is a very beautiful
creature however can be full of death if anything touches it. Finally, the fact
that the camera pans and has racking focus on to Ben’s best friend Stuart shows
life and death because without Stuart being part of Ben’s plan to commit
suicide, his plan would not have worked, however Stuart helps him to pull off
the plan because he understands Ben’s life and therefore helps Ben’s life by
being his best friend and helping him to end his life in order to benefit
others. This shot is full of life and death and through analysis the diegesis
unfolds. Finally, the final shot of Ben in the bath tub with the jellyfish has
a connection with the shot of Emily in her bath tub after she has gotten his
heart. After the surgery, Emily finds out from Ben’s brother about every person
that he helped and how his purpose of meeting Emily was to end his life for
her. Emily is shown in a close up shot of her lying in water and then sinking
her ears underneath the water. The porcelain tub creates a very nice curve
arching around her head as she sinks her ears underwater to hear her heartbeat.
The water around her head creates the look that she has a halo around her head
which is representative of how she has Ben’s heart in her and he was an angel
to seven people by enhancing their lives. She sinks underwater to hear her
heart which is literally Ben’s heart after the transplant. With that aspect,
the scene can be shown as the connection between life and death because Ben had
to die in order for her to get his heart, however now she can stay alive
longer. The heart that she has inside of her in this scene is Ben's, whom is now
dead, yet she is alive and has a halo look above her head. This connection
between life and death allowed her to live even though Ben had to die for it. Ultimately,
Emily continued to live because Ben died for her and sealed the connection
between life and death.
Life and death appear to be
opposites, however both are connected so deeply that only through experiencing
the death of someone can a human being even begin to understand the connection
that life and death share. Throughout this film, Grant Nieporte was able to
capture so many emotions through the diegesis that he created with the use of
sound, editing, and mise-en-scene. First, sound enhanced the film by adding to
the emotion that was already being created by the shot itself. Especially in
the end of the film, by playing a happy song with one off key note, the song
sounded oddly depressing which benefited the sequences because Ben had to die
in order to help Emily and Ezra, however neither of them wanted him to die for
it, so it shows that there will always be a connection between life and death
where some aspects are happy and others are not. Then, editing was able to
create a strong diegesis, especially through the use of parallel editing in
multiple shots. By using the same blue color it connected the fact that the
ocean is beautiful and a delicate looking creature swims in it, however the
blue ends with death because Ben dies from the same beautiful creature that
lives in the ocean. Also, the salmon color is a very common theme during the
film that connects the death of Ben, and earlier in the film his wife, with the
life that Ben and Emily had together during their intimate connection. Finally,
mise-en-scene played the biggest role in this film because at any point the
shots give hints toward the underlying theme that life and death are connected
in such a way that it creates beauty. The use of media plays an important role
on human emotions and helping to spread awareness in the world. By creating
this film, Grant helped to show the world that people can end their life in
seven seconds by reading a text message and that by ending any person’s life,
it takes years to get it back, and in the end, nobody can get back their life,
knowing they took the lives of many others. This film helped to show the world
how easily life can end, while at the same time showing the connection between
life and death. People think that life is such a beautiful thing and that death
always bring sadness, however, as can be seen in this film, they are both
connected and everything has to exist with both. Both of them can be happy and
sad because they coexist and create everything that occurs in this world. Although
death may be sad and life seems happy, realize that both must coexist in order
to create a balanced world.
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