The weightiness of Seven Pounds

By Steven Zeitchik

We're not sure if anyone ever in the history of cinema thought to combine the world's biggest movie star with the fractured narrative and introspective tone of a certain kind of solemn auteur movie, but if they did they'd get something pretty close to "Seven Pounds."

There's already a lot of talk about how much reporters or reviewers should reveal about the film -- it is one of those movies where part of the joy is orienting yourself on its map -- so we'll be careful with spoilers too. Suffice it to say that it plays like those darker indies in which a tragic event changes one character and then, partly though his reckoning/guilt, changes everyone around him. (Think "21 Grams," "13 Conversations About One Thing" and other movies whose titles seem to contain numbers.)

That's not at all to disparage "Seven Pounds." Though the heavyness sometimes turns into heavy-handedness, particularly in the film's central romance between Will Smith's martyr and Rosario Dawson's victimized girl-next-door, overall it's an impressive, often moving, work about penance and sacrifice.  Directing choices that could have felt precious only rarely do; more often they give the film touches of mood, style and even whimsy. And while some of the moments that are meant to play as surprises aren't really that surprising, the movie packs in enough low-key reveals to reward close viewing.

And Smith? Well, it's a strong performance, and he's expanding -- sort of. His patented wiseguy charmer is less in evidence here than it has been in almost any other movie, and it's the kind of performance crafted to evoke plaudits about reinvention, most of them justified. But he's also building off bits he's tried before: the everyman with everyday problems a la "Pursuit of Happyness" (also a collaboration with director Gabriele Muccino), or the stranger who drops into people's lives and shakes them up, reminiscent of "Six Degrees of Separation. Even the tortured-soul aspects, certainly more prominent here than they've been in a Smith movie before, in some ways had roots planted in "Hancock."

The real wrinkle, of course, is going to be the marketing. At a screening we went to Wednesday evening, one of the theater staffers noted with surprise that he had no idea what the movie was about. He has a point. The way to get maximum return on watching a movie like this is to know very little and let the deducing become part of the experience (note Columbia's poster with little more than a shot of Smith and Dawson sitting in a meadow).

But "Seven Pounds" may have to do more if it wants to get people in theaters. Moody indies rely on word of mouth, but Smith pictures lean on the high-concept (eg, last man wandering the streets of New York, or homeless man becomes stockbroker). In that sense, it's another knd of experiment: a movie with A-list cachet that will put people in seats with buzz about its storyline.

Comments

[Crystalfrost Jones]

I seriously think this may be Will's best film ever, and is definitely Oscar material.