Why Does It Always Rain In David Fincher's Films?

INTRODUCTION

Cinema is an enhanced version of reality. 

Even the most naturalistic ‘based on a true story’ movie bends the real world for the sake of more engaging cinema. For example, every film uses lighting to amplify reality for emotional effect. Without it stories would lack a visual appeal and appear bland. 

Every movie carefully selects a costume for its characters and uses a deliberately designed set to present information in the frame. If the strict and complete truth was always presented on screen it would diminish the emotional and thematic statements which the filmmaker is trying to make.

After watching a few Fincher films I realised that one way he presents a cinematic world which is an exaggerated version of real life is through the weather.

SEVEN

In Seven it’s always raining. From scene to scene to scene. In fact, just about the only scene where it isn’t pouring with rain, the sun is baking down a sweltering warm light with harsh shadows. So why is the weather often so unrelenting in Fincher’s Seven. Well, I think he uses weather in the same way that cinematographers use light or that costume designers use fabric. It’s a textural, tonal tool that unconsciously amplifies emotion and lifts the story out of mundaneness.

The challenge for any artist has always been how to take a form, in this case a series of projected 2D images, and make the viewer experience a real, life-like, emotional reaction akin to how they feel in the real world. 

A word that Fincher himself has used in interviews is ‘visceral’ - defined as relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect. Rain produces deep inward feelings - damp, dirty, cold, wet, chilled to the bone. None of these associations are particularly pleasant. Trudging through rain without an umbrella feels harsh. This is why it’s perfect for the grisly, harsh story of tracking down a serial killer.

Weather reflects the emotional tone of the story.

Take this scene. Reading the screenplay, that Fincher was tasked with turning into a movie, reveals nothing about it pouring with rain.

The description for this scene reads: “The trunk of Somerset’s car contains a homicide kit...Somerset takes out rubber gloves and pockets them, closing the trunk. He walks to join Mills and Officer Davis, a uniformed cop.”

It’s a very factual description which only talks about actions, not tone, nor the weather. Fincher could have set it on a regular sunny day with the sounds of birds chirping in the background. It would have saved on the expense of hiring a bunch of rain machines and the set up time it took. 

Instead he opens the sequence with the unscripted shot of Mills standing cold, drenched, hunched, shifting uncomfortably holding two takeaway coffees. The rain beats down. The presence of rain adds a very different psychological feeling than it would if Mills was standing around, hands in his pockets on a blissful summer day. It puts the characters, and us as the audience on edge, setting the tone for the grisly, harsh scene which is about to come.

When asked about the film, Fincher noted that Seven was never meant to be a movie which used violence for the sake of violence. Rather it was meant to capture a psychologically violent tone that gets the audience to imagine inhumanity.

Creating a tense, visceral tone, with things like weather, that hangs around like a mist the entire movie is arguably more effective at creating a feeling of inhumanity than simply showing something gruesome happen. The build up is more terrifying than the pay off.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

With all this analysis and psychological guesswork out the way let’s turn to a quote from Fincher about the rain in Seven: “The movie cost $15 million below the line. We wanted to shoot in Oakland. Beautiful clapboard houses. But we didn’t have enough time. So it’s all downtown LA. The reason it rains all of the time is that we only had Brad Pitt for 55 days, with no contingency. So we did it to stay on schedule, because we knew that if it ever really rained we would have been f-----.”

So I guess that theory goes out the window. Maybe the only role that weather serves is a practical one to maintain continuity when time is limited. But maybe not. I still think his choice of using the rain is one that has a tonal impact on the story.  

Seven isn’t the only movie of his which features extreme weather conditions. In Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, from the lighting down to the colour grade, it always feels cold. This bone chilling cold seeps into the story, which also deals with inhumanity and violence, in a visceral way. Indeed many scenes take place with snow. 

While you may think that maybe this time Fincher brought in a bunch of snow machines to avoid any weather problems again, the opposite in fact was the case.

“Well, it informed [the story]. You needed to feel it. You know, a lot of the snow and a lot of the weather effects are CG, and I didn’t know if I’d have dared to make it as bold and crazy. I would have thought it was over the top had I not lived through it.”

In many scenes, CGI is used to amplify the weather and feeling of cold in the story. Creating that thing that Fincher is so good at doing - an overall, visceral tone.

Due to the difficulty of accurately predicting weather conditions and getting inconsistent weather, CGI is a way of reliably attaining control over how much of the elements filmmakers would like to add to sets.

Like many of Fincher’s characters, who are drawn to details, he himself is a filmmaker to whom details matter. Using visual effects to do it in post production affords him maximum control. 

Although imbibing the film with cold throughout certainly puts you in the dark place of minds of the characters, I think that not all weather symbolises the same emotions. Just as colour usually has symbolic meaning which is not necessarily tied down, so does weather. It’s raining in both of these scenes but the emotional tone differs pretty significantly between them.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Even in an arguably less visceral more conventional drama like The Social Network weather is used in subtle ways at key moments in the story to alter emotion.

For example, after the protagonist gets dumped by his girlfriend, he steps outside the pub and takes a walk around. During his walk around the campus, the floor is damp. It has just rained. This subtle touch adds to the dampness of his mood. This was done using a technique called a ‘wet down’, where hoses are used to spray a textured floor, such as tar or paving, prior to shooting. 

This both creates highlights on the ground from backlight, breaking up darker parts of the image, and, importantly, adds an atmospheric touch. 

Or, when one of the characters finds out that his idea has been stolen he goes outside into the cold night and crosses a bridge littered with patches of snow. This little detail is a decision clearly made by the director to create a cold, desolate feeling.  

Or in the build up to a big argument scene in the movie one of the characters arrives and, you guessed it, it’s raining again. 

Now I’m not arguing that all weather in films that you see is always intentional. There are definitely situations where you have to just shoot in whatever weather you have. But I would argue that Fincher, and many other filmmakers out there, are as deliberate as possible about how they use weather. They try to control it as much as they can.

Fincher said in an interview that filmmakers usually only get about 60% of what they want to film on set -  and that’s on a good day.

He makes up for this gap with special effects using rain machines, fake snow or CGI weather to control the tone of the story.

So the next time that you’re writing a screenplay, directing or even watching a film, take a second to think about what the weather is doing and how it is used to enhance reality and sculpt a very specific filmic tone and visceral feeling.