Since Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths hit cinemas in 2012, a lot has happened.
There’s been a global pandemic, Brexit had happened, and there is an ongoing move towards decentralising and de-classifying art, just to name a few examples. All these things have made us question our value as humans, often to the point of existential numbness. While you might not go as far as to call this film prophetic, the ideas of extreme self-reference, being desensitised to violence, and making sense of madness that it presents to us still ring true today. As a result, Seven Psychopaths remains a bittersweet portrait of the state of the world.
Such a portrait is predominantly embodied by Marty (played with constant desperation by Colin Farrell). A struggling writer whose frustrating lack of inspiration and alcoholic tendencies leave him exiled by his girlfriend, Marty crashes with his friend Billy (Sam Rockwell), a dognapper and action-crime fanatic. When a dognapping goes wrong, Marty, Billy and the calmly introspective Hans (Billy’s partner in crime, played with equal tranquility by Christopher Walken) find themselves in a predicament that reveals a bit too much about their personalities, making great material for Marty’s latest project: ‘Seven Psychopaths.’
Being about a struggling writer, it isn’t surprising that Psychopaths has a lot of meta elements to it. Smart comments made throughout the film could be translated into the real world of scriptwriting and the struggles that come with it (some of which will be touched on later). A certain self-awareness is present; to make a comparison, you could turn—although apprehensively—to Fellini’s 1963 classic 8 1/2, which follows a similar, semi-autobiographical line of being inspired by a lack of inspiration. However, the aim of the uninspired inspiration here feels a lot more perverse and self-indulgent than self-fulfilling.
There are numerous moments throughout the film where Marty and Billy imagine they are psychopaths, dramatising them to comic effect. Eric Kohn notes in his review from the time that despite the stupidity of these gags, their dramatisation feels very “calculated.” In these imaginings, we learn more about Billy and Marty’s characters than the characters they are trying to come up with because of their perverse and shallow approach to psychopathy. This is still a prevalent issue; the recently released Netflix series Dahmer has fetishised the idea of a serial killer, in a similar way to Zac Efron’s Ted Bundy in 2019’s Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. It is this detachment from the reality of violence and psychopathy for the means of entertainment that McDonagh is satirising in these “calculated” gags.
This is a perfect example, therefore, of the timelessness—be it deliberate or not—of Seven Psychopaths, presented both through the characters of Marty and Billy and the film’s mindless violence. There’s a comedic irony here, in McDonagh building a criticism by carrying out that which he is criticising. It works for the most part, as we’ve explored already, but there’s always a danger here that the presentation can become too real, thus invalidating the message by doing the very thing it is criticising a little too well. Take, for example, a line uttered by Hans after reading Marty’s first draft; “your women characters are awful!” Marty replies “it’s a hard world for women”. This is a good exposition of the tautology behind female under-representation in film, and perhaps why there are few female characters in Seven Psychopaths (certainly no Bechdel ideals), to demonstrate this meta-criticism. However, assuming this is a criticism, McDonagh would’ve done better to show an alternative; a solution to the problem, rather than try and paint a picture of the stupidity of female under-representation, which can be found in more or less any movie ever. Greta Gerwig is a good example of this alternative, the mastery of her female representation in Lady Bird (2017) making it a desirable end point, as opposed to pejorative representations, which needlessly reflect the status quo.
Whether this is part of the bittersweet pessimism of the film or a point where it genuinely folds in on itself, you cannot dispute the prevalence of this dangerous introspection today. Accusations and identity politics have become so complex that we often find ourselves stuck in a rut, where the clashes between our conscience and what society deems our conscience should be leave us thinking “who am I?” Well, McDonagh responds.
The main narrative vehicle of Seven Psychopaths is that there isn’t one fully grounded player in the story for the others to riff off. Everybody in this film is, in one way or another, slightly psychopathic. Indeed, despite the film’s title, the main trailer for its release counts a completely different list of psychopaths, including “The Seemingly Normal One” (Marty) and his “Passive Aggressive Girlfriend.” Now not every character is completely deranged and void of any method behind their decisions. All of the psychotic characters have a backstory; Mafia boss Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson) might be mad, but it’s his love for his Shih Tzu that drives his madness. Old-timey psychopath Zachariah (Tom Waits) killed psychopaths after the love of his life was abused by one. Even Hans, the Quaker pacifist, turned to psychopathy after the murder of his daughter. The only person this doesn’t apply to is Billy.
“It doesn’t make any sense!”
“Too Bad!”
Paolo (Zeljko Ivanek) & Hans (Christopher Walken)
Billy’s psychopathy is real. It is baseless, cold-blooded, and unpredictable. The conflict between him and Marty is yet another example of the detachment between the writer and his subject matter. Throughout the film, Marty tries to fuse psychopathy with some lofty subtext about “peace and love”. This character depth works for most of the psychopaths, who have true intentions behind their mania. Billy represents how a real psychopath often lacks any subtext beneath their actions. People often say that to theorise atrocity does a disservice to its victims, which remains a prevalent issue today (note the criticism of Jojo Rabbit in 2019, with The Guardian calling its humorously light-hearted take on Nazism “oddly safe” and “sanitised”). McDonagh mocks this perverse idea of presenting true, uncalculated psychopathy, with a bolt-on justification of “peace and love,” through the backfire of Marty taking on Billy as a writing partner, without knowing his true intentions.
It is this distance between creativity and actuality that creates the basis for both comedy and morality in Seven Psychopaths. It is also the reflection we see of writers today, including McDonagh. You cannot deny how vivid this allegory has remained, making it as funny, insightful, and outrageous as the day it was released.
Words by Oisín McGilloway
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