The Murk of THE SEVENTH VICTIM

Click on this image for a better jpeg.

JACQUELINE: Who are you?

MIMI: I’m Mimi. I’m dying.

JACQUELINE: No!

MIMI: Yes. I've been quiet, oh ever so quiet. I hardly move, and yet it keeps coming all the time, closer and closer. And I rest and I rest and... and still I'm dying.

JACQUELINE: And you don’t want to die. I’ve always wanted to die. Always.

MIMI: I’m afraid. And I’m tired of being afraid, of waiting.

JACQUELINE: Why wait?

MIMI: I’m not going to wait. I’m going out, I'm going to laugh, and dance, and do all the things I used to do.

JACQUELINE: And then?

MIMI: I don’t know.

JACQUELINE: You will die.

What can I say about THE SEVENTH VICTIM that has not been mentioned before in countless articles? That the film has more symbolic weight than dramatic resolution? More characters than it needs, yet insufficient reasons for them to act as they do? More explanations than seem necessary, yet nothing to dispel the murk of motivation and consequence?

What we have, here, is the search for a victim whom the heroes cannot save, and the villains cannot kill, in a film that cannot be forgotten. For all of its twisting complexity and fundamental simplicity, the film remains unlike anything else I have seen from its decade, with an ending as abrupt and as final as a back-alley stabbing. That makes it worth celebration.