Will Smith is interested in emotional pain now, in the dark side of American life, in people who are sad or sick or just plain unlucky, and he's found a partner in the Italian director Gabriele Muccino. The team collaborated on "Pursuit of Happyness," a 2006 film that told the true gutter-to-riches story of a brilliant, talented man who still almost fell through society's cracks. Their new film, "Seven Pounds," is a spiritual successor to "Pursuit," but darker and more oblique.
In fact, the movie is so roundabout and cryptic that it takes half the running time just to figure out the general nature of what's going on. "Seven Pounds" makes a mystery of its lead character and of what he's pursuing, and for a very simple reason: If the movie were to announce its subject and story in the usual straightforward way, it would seem so ridiculous, far-fetched and borderline distasteful that no one would want to watch it. It might even seem funny.
So Muccino's task is clear, if difficult - to generate enough magic and to work up just the right mood so as to cast a spell on viewers. That way, when the movie's intentions and meaning are finally made clear, nothing will seem discordant or strange. All will make sense. For the most part, Muccino accomplishes this precise balance that Grant Neoporte's screenplay requires.
Going in, all we know about Ben (Smith) is that something terrible has happened in his past, and that he feels responsible for it. That's all. Everything else we gradually piece together, through a fractured narrative that jumbles the time sequence. We learn that he is an IRS agent. Later, we see that he does field audits, but audits of a very particular and repugnant kind. He seems to specialize in hounding people for back taxes when they're in the hospital, sometimes with serious illnesses.
There's anger in this guy. In one scene, he talks on the phone to a food company's customer service representative (Woody Harrelson), and when he finds out the man is blind, he goes ballistic and starts taunting him, making withering, demeaning remarks and shouting into the phone. Obviously, this is not the usual Will Smith, and that difference is half the appeal of "Seven Pounds," to see a familiar screen presence show new sides of himself.
Smith has made a point of stretching in recent years. Even in the title role of "Hancock," which was in most ways a routine action movie, Smith had to build a character different from his usual rambunctious action persona, tapping into reserves of sorrow and disillusionment. But he goes much further in "Seven Pounds." His breeziness becomes a shallow act, and his smile becomes downright eerie, a strained mask that hides pain, wards off hostility and expresses aggression all at the same time. It's a smile with dead eyes.
Throughout, "Seven Pounds" has a distinct quality. The pensive score, the subjective cinematography and even the muted aspect of the featured performances all contribute to a sense of being trapped inside a waking dream, or nightmare. Ben leads a hollow existence, a death in life, and the people with whom he comes into contact are the forgotten, who have dropped out of the world.
Enjoyment of "Seven Pounds" rests entirely in how one reacts to the romance that develops between the austere IRS agent and Emily (Rosario Dawson), a graphic artist suffering from congenital heart failure. Some will cry foul, say it's too much, that the movie turns maudlin. But for those who find themselves on the film's wavelength, this is love at the edge of the universe. This is the kind of thing that inspires people to write operas.
Dawson, with her strident but delicate beauty, is worthy of operatic treatment. "Seven" shows once again that she has it in her to be a powerhouse, even as it showcases a sweetness and vulnerability she hasn't shown before. Dawson, who played Mimi in "Rent" and Edward Norton's girlfriend in Spike Lee's "25th Hour," is ready to take her place as a major screen actress.
In the end, the most appealing thing about "Seven Pounds" is the element it shares with Smith's more cheerful movies: It affirms life as something enormous and important, not small, not meaningless, but monumental and worthy of big statements.
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