Seven Pounds

            Life is a beautiful miracle that exists all throughout the universe whether it’s a planet, a human, a plant, or an animal; however, it is inevitable that it will eventually end in death. Wherever life is found death follows. This is because these two elements must coexist with each other to maintain balance.  Within the movie Seven Pounds, directed by Gabriele Muccino, the contrasting properties of life and death follow this trend and are always in sync. The coexisting but also contrasting concepts of life and death in the movie are always found together which illuminates the idea that life and death are bound to each other to balance out existence as a whole.

There is a representation of life all through out the film. Within the film, Emily is portrayed as this angelic and dainty woman who represents the beauty and delicateness of life. In every scene she is in there is some form of nature and liveliness around her as her soul is thriving even though her body is dying from heart failure. In the beginning of the film there is a scene where Emily is just returning from a walk with her dog, Duke, when she faints because of her weak heart. The angle of framing was a bird’s eye view shot of her lying on the ground with a halo of flowers and grass around her (Seven Pounds). Because of the halo of nature that surrounds her in that scene, it can be inferred that Emily symbolizes life and her soul is prospering but her heart cannot keep up. The halo of flowers presumes her holy spirit. In another scene there is Ben showing Emily that he had fixed her elderly printing machine and leaves Emily in an awe of gratitude (Seven Pounds). The shot used here was a wide-angle lens and a wide scale so that Emily, Ben, and the machine were shown together to allow the audience to feel gratification towards Ben and also pick up on the emotion of love between them. This scene contains foreshadowing as the printing machine is a metaphor for Emily’s heart and that Ben will soon fix it. The last scene that depicts Emily as the figure of life is in the ending of the film when she is lying in her bathtub after receiving Ben’s heart (Seven Pounds). The close up of her displays her face appearing livelier and the water is a symbol of purification. The tub that takes up the rest of the screen represents another halo that interprets Emily as the beautiful angel of life. Emily is constantly paired with symbols of life and purity in the duration of the film. These pairings are displayed to give Emily an aura full of purity and delicateness that represents life.

While symbols of life are seen very frequently throughout the film, the representation of death is additionally just as prominent. Ben Thomas is the symbol of death within the film because although he survived the fatal car crash that killed seven only years before his soul did not live on. The color blue is the dominant color around Ben within this film to add the emotion of sorrow to the viewers whenever Ben is seen. In the middle of the movie there is a close up scene of Ben in the shower with the water pouring over his face but he looks absolutely miserable. He then has a flashback to the car crash and how his wife had died in it (Seven Pounds). The water pouring over him symbolizes his purification because although he killed seven people he is sacrificing parts of him to save another seven people as redemption for what happened. In another scene there is a flashback to the Ben as a young child seeing the box jellyfish, one of the deadliest animals in the world, for the first time (Seven Pounds). In this medium long shot his hands were up on the glass as the jellyfish swam by and he was looking at it in awe. This scene holds foreshadowing to the ending of the film when his box jellyfish killed him when it wrapped around his hand. After Ben had grown up he bought a box Jellyfish and kept it as a pet and this adds on to the representation of Ben as the symbol of death because he has always been around death, or deadly things. In the last scene Ben is shown in the bathtub with the angle of framing as a bird’s eye view looking down at him as the jellyfish is wrapped around his arm (Seven Pounds). The bathtub that is an ellipse around him represents a halo for his holiness because although he is committing suicide he is doing it to save Emily, Ezra, and numerous other people. Additionally he is sitting in water, which is a symbol for purification, and he dies in it, which adds to the belief that his soul remains pure even if what he is doing is considered a sin. Ben is constantly in contact with things that symbolize death and therefore is considered to represent it primarily because of his sorrowful aura but also because he is sacrificing himself as redemption for the people he man slaughtered.  

Because life and death are two of the most prevalent symbols in the movie, they must have a way of coexisting and maintaining balance in the world. Ben, the portrayal of death experienced life before the accident and after the accident is soul was dead and gone with the people who had died so tragically. He brought life and happiness to as many people as he could to redeem himself for taking seven lives and eventually his own. Emily, the portrayal of life brought emotion and meaning to those around her, especially Ben. In the near ending of the film a rear projection scene provides minimum view of Ben and Emily have relations with each other (Seven Pounds). This scene provides symbolism of life and death being hand in hand with each other and that they always coincide. In another contrasting shot near the beginning displays Emily and Ben sitting in Emily’s kitchen discussing Emily’s heart failure and her rapidly arriving death (Seven Pounds). Mise-en-scene displays the whole room is lit up and this exemplifies the life that is all around them but they are both dark, which adds sentiment to the very sorrowful topic they are conversing, and in a more figurative sense that they are both dying either literally or figuratively. A few days later Ben and Emily take Duke for a walk and a medium long shot exposes them sitting in the most beautiful meadow full of energy and life (Seven Pounds). The emotion pulled from this scene is happiness because both Ben and Emily are radiating with smiles and Duke is galloping in the field. It is almost as if they are in the stereotypical envision of heaven. In parallel to happiness, the sense of heartache is also present because while they are both enjoying each other’s presence, it won’t be like that for much longer because only one of them can live. They will no longer be able to exist together at the same point in time. Ben can see all the life that Emily has around her and inside her and it encourages him more and more to save her unlike how he couldn’t save his wife from the accident. Along with these examples the mere fact that Ben, who is dead in terms of his soul, and Emily, who is the representation life, are together prove that life and death come as a package.

The coinciding but also contrasting concepts of life and death in the movie are always found together which exemplifies the idea that in order to maintain the balance of existence it is necessary for life and death to be bound together. For the duration of the movie Emily portrays life, and so do the items that she is in close contact with, such as flowers or water, which symbolizes purity and positive energy. In contrast, symbolizations of death associate with Ben all throughout the movie, thus making him the figure of death. All through out the movie life and death, which are represented by Emily and Ben respectively, are found in coexistence with each other. The binding of Ben and Emily adds balance to the movie. This holds true to the fact that where one element is present the other isn’t far behind. This also shows that it is necessary for them to be found together in order to stabilize the existence that they live in the world surrounding them.