JIGSAW

From the movies Saw 1-4

CHERISH. YOUR. LIFE.

I’m going to ask you to do me a favor. For a few moments, I want you to set aside all your reservations about these movies and walk with me through the mind of a serial killer. Actually, he’s not much of a killer. In fact, he despises murderers. Four bloody, gruesome, sick, and twisted movies, however, have taken us for a ride through the mind of one of the most brilliant killers we have ever seen on screen. But in order for most of you to take that ride, you are going to have to put aside your reactions to the violence and gore and tighten up your stomachs…and hear me out.

I am going to make an assertion right now that may surprise you. I am going to assert that Jigsaw (aka John Kramer) is not only one of the most brilliant characters we’ve seen on screen, but the message that he teaches us is also brilliant–and inspiring.

Did I just say “inspiring”? Yeah, you heard me right. Like I said, you are going to have to set aside your reservations about the gore. You are going to have to forget the pure torture and violence that you have seen on screen. You are going to have to forget the blood and the guts for a moment and look past the violence to get into his head.

In the beginning of Saw IV, we see the doctor sawing open his skull and pulling out his brain (among other nasty stuff done at an autopsy). Ever stop to wonder how exactly that brain cooked up some of the stuff he did? Ever stopped to think beyond what the movies have shown you into the mind of a complete psycho-path, psuedo-killer? I have and I am going to take you for a walk through the movies and try to help you understand the psycho for a change.

Let me warn you that there are SPOILERS ahead. If you haven’t seen the movies, then I highly suggest you stop reading because this is going to be full of spoilers and these movies are truly at their greatest when someone doesn’t ruin the endings for you. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. (Ha ha!)

Saw I

Who is doing this? We are seeing (in one of the tamest of the four movies in terms of gore, torture, and violence) a game being played. We see dead bodies with puzzle pieces cut out of them. We see two men trapped in a room together with the clock running down. We see a deranged cop, hot on the killer’s tail. We are introduced to the characters that are going to have a larger role as the story progresses. The picture is very small right now–confined to merely a room, but there is the sense that something greater is going on. That the key to the events of the rest of the movies lies squarely in this room. This is where the game truly begins.

Then, the movie ends, and this man rises up off the floor (a man in whom we have only seen once for a few brief seconds) turns to the bloody, tired, and beaten Adam and says the words, “Game Over.”

At this point, we finally find out who Jigsaw truly is–a cancer patient who’s own clock is winding down. A man who has the patience to lay on a cold concrete floor for over seven hours and not make a move, not make a sound, and not even give us the slightest hint that he’s even alive. In this movie we discover the incredible PATIENCE of a truly psychopathic man.

Saw II

After we had our socks rocked off and figured out who he was, now we learn a little bit about him. We learn the catalyst that set his game in motion. We don’t see much of the roots of the game itself, but we see the moment of clarity–the defining moment in his life that told him it was time to set a horrific game into motion that would change the lives of a whole lot of people.

We hear him speak. We watch as he remains calm, even in the face of threats. We watch a man dangle the entire police force from a rope and play them all like puppets. We learn that he has managed to recruit an accomplice and has tried to train her to carry on his work. If I had to assign a trait to him that we learn about in this movie, it would be CONTROL.

Saw III

Here is where the first glimpse of a much larger puzzle really comes into play. It is this movie that has taught us that this game was not merely limited to just one house, nor was it hindered by his physical weakness. We learn that the game is on a much larger scale, and that we truly had no idea the gravity of it all.

We discover that the game itself is of utmost importance. We discover that even his apprentice means nothing to him against the grand scheme of the game. We learn that the games are MEANT to be won. We learn that he’s truly ROOTING for these people to win these games. That he doesn’t WANT these people to die. He is not out for revenge, but rather to “test the fabric of human nature”. These games and tests were meant to be won and ultimately that’s what he WANTS.

Given a word to describe the trait we learn about him from this movie, I would say PASSION.

Saw IV

Out of nowhere, we open the book and realize that not only is this game larger than we expected, not only is the game of utmost importance, but that there is a completely DIFFERENT side of the game in which we haven’t even been introduced yet. A “mirror” of the first three movie’s games. A completely different side-line game that is part of an even LARGER game.

We learn that there is no telling just how many accomplices he might have recruited. We learn about his married life. But most importantly (I think) we learn about WHY he feels the way he feels. We get a true feeling for the events that originally spawned the idea of these games and we see that not only did he have a wife, but the loss of a child due to the autrocities of human nature drove him to devise this game. The catalyst we learned of back in Saw II was merely the thing that set the whole thing in motion (along with his impending death from cancer), but the ideas themselves were planted in his former life–the man who existed before the wreck.

From this movie, I would assign him the trait of DUALITY.

*****

So, we have four character traits (and more yet to come in Saw V and VI): PATIENCE, CONTROL, PASSION, and DUALITY.

Does he seem a little more human to you yet? Have you truly managed to set aside your hatred for the character himself to see these four sides of humanity? His is an extreme case of humanity used in a sick and twisted way, but at the end of the day the thing that makes us like these movies is the humanity of the character, the passion with which he stands for what he believes, and the duality of his nature.

A man who sets traps to gruesomely kill people tells us to “cherish our lives”? A man who tests people into extreme gore and violence, making killers out of a few of them, tells us that so many people are ungrateful to be ALIVE? A man who turns off his old life like a light switch and embarks to truly ruin other people’s lives in the most sadistic way possible tells us to sieze the day?

It’s love/hate. It’s heaven and hell. It’s God and the Devil. The character of Jigsaw illuminates what it’s like to be both God and the Devil–to be both love and hate. The movies test the fabric of OUR nature in spite of the blood and the guts. I can’t say that I enjoy watching these movies for the gore, but I am utterly fascinated by the duality and the humanity of this character. I am completely confused how I can love a character so much that I should truly despise. And I am in utter shock to think that I can RELATE to a character who does these things. I think we all can relate the humanity of his character, even if we all agree that the means by which he chose to give his message was completely out of reality and twisted beyond belief.

I urge you to watch these movies with that in mind. Look past the blood and guts and truly understand the message that’s being told. Untwist what has been twisted, and live the message: Cherish your life, sieze the day, be grateful for being alive.

That’s a game I want to play…do you?