This is a story that I’ve thought about a lot over the course of my life, so I had specific expectations about how that story might be told onscreen. Also, I’ve had a love-hate thing going with Fincher from the start, so I had no idea which reaction I’d have walking into ZODIAC. I have fundamental issues with ALIEN 3, and as much as I know Fincher was under enormous strain from all directions on that picture, it doesn’t change that my first reaction in the theater was intense hatred for the filmmaker, and an oath to never sit through anything by him again.
I was big on that sort of dramatic pronouncement in those days. An irritated fanboy can be a bigger drama queen than Scarlett O’Hara.
With SE7EN, the trailers won me over before I knew it was Fincher, and I gave him a chance one Saturday afternoon. Opening weekend, so I didn’t know much yet. And it caved my head in. I loved it. Loved every second of it.
THE GAME? Not so much. Like it. Think it’s got issues.
FIGHT CLUB? Well... see for yourself.
PANIC ROOM? Nope. Not at all. Not for me. It’s the first time I thought it was fair to dismiss him as “a music video director,” because it is a remarkably slick film about absolutely nothing. The camera is the star of the film. The entire thing exists as an ode to the pre-viz process. I could accept it as a style exercise as a warm up to something else, but he made this movie and then vanished for five years. Was that layoff worth the wait? Is this good Fincher or bad Fincher? Or is it something else, some new version of the filmmaker... a reinvention, perhaps?
ZODIAC doesn’t feel like anything else he’s made so far. He’s been a very visually-oriented filmmaker up till now, always choosing the great shot, the cutting-edge way of expressing some idea. In ZODIAC, the last thing you’re thinking of as you watch is the camera work. Fincher has returned with a subdued visual approach that pays off in a new emphasis on his actors and on mood.
The people that are going to tell you that ZODIAC is “poorly directed” are the people who define good direction by how much you move your camera. Personally, I’m glad he made the decision to drop the horseshit, because he was in danger of becoming a parody of himself. And instead, he’s made a great film, a powerful, sober work about madness, fear, and the elusive nature of truth.
I remember when the Zodiac was still in the news. One night, I had insomnia, as I often did as a child, and I was staying in the upstairs attic bedroom at my grandmother’s house. Tom Snyder’s TOMORROW show was on, and they were doing a special report recapping the entire Zodiac case. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Tom Snyder and the producers of that particular episode for scaring the blue-eyed shit out of me. I was probably six or seven years old, and the story that show laid out for me that night absolutely petrified me. I was in Memphis, Tennessee that night, but it didn’t matter; I was convinced the Zodiac killer was going to climb the ivy on the outside of my grandmother’s house and break into the attic room specifically so he could get me.
There was one drawing in particular that they used during the program, done by a staff cartoonist for one of the San Francisco newspapers. A man in a black hood, with a gun in his hand and a knife on his belt. When I turned off the light after Snyder’s show, that’s the shape I kept seeing in the shadows. I had nightmares about the Zodiac Killer for months. I still find him to be one of the most haunting of all modern nightmare figures. Like Jack the Ripper, he endures as a figure of menace because he evaded capture. As unlikely as it is, there’s still that minute chance than when you see this movie this weekend, the Zodiac could be that ordinary looking guy in his late 50s sitting behind you, eating his popcorn. There’s a chance. And just that chance gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies when I think about it.
If you want to really get a taste for what this film is about, spend a few hours on the Internet doing your own research on The Zodiac Killer. Start with Wikipedia and then just follow the various links and Google searches and so on, and see what you come up with. See what sort of cacophony of opinion there is out there. Wade on out into that ocean of crazy surrounding this case.
Once you do that, you’ll understand the ride that Fincher’s built for you with ZODIAC. I’m not sure how anyone could watch this film and believe conclusively that any one person has been definitively identified as the killer. I know that Robert Graysmith thinks he identified the killer, and the film makes his personal choice abundantly clear. But does the film say that person is guilty? I’m not so sure. I think Fincher’s after something far more interesting than just a procedural. I think instead, he’s made a film about the toll that the procedure takes on the people involved. Characters come and go. People fall out of the film for a while, and some reappear while others don’t. It’s a sad film, a film where everyone who ends up touching this case feels doomed. It’s an episodic film, and it meanders quite a bit, and ultimately, it’s going to frustrate anyone who walks in looking for SE7EN. It’s going to frustrate anyone who walks in looking for a thriller.
There are several moments that are ripe with a dark anticipation, tense and creepy and even a little funny. Fincher’s great at that, and if he had wanted to, he could have turned this into a really scary film. The fear that this film deals with isn’t the cheap-thrill slasher movie kind of fear, though. This is existential dread. Fear of failure. Fear of disgrace. Fear of madness. The closest thing we get to a conventional horror moment is the attack on Cecelia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell at Twin Oak Ridge. It’s terrifying, but it’s shot very matter-of-fact. That dispassionate eye is a new thing for Fincher, and it’s the right choice. It makes this human instead of “cool.” These murders, the fear that gripped San Francisco and the surrounding areas, the toll this entire thing took on so many lives... that’s not “cool.” Instead of worrying about trying to make his camera do a CGI zoom through the barrel of a gun, he has focused that attention to detail to recapturing a period. And he’s done it in a far more canny way than just slapping some bellbottoms on his extras. He’s really soaked up his ‘70s cinema before making this one, and the film feels like it was made in the period where it takes place. It doesn’t feel period; it is period. It’s a time machine. Fincher has spoken about how he and screenwriter Jamie Vanderbilt worked with law enforcement, sorting through everything that exists on the Zodiac, and they’ve captured every single piece of the case, no matter how seemingly insignificant.
Because that’s the point. In a case like this, where so many questions go so maddeningly unanswered, who’s to say which details are significant and which ones aren’t? Inspector David Toschi (played to rumpled perfection by Mark Ruffalo) and his partner William Armstrong (a suitably world-weary Anthony Edwards) are never sure, no matter how much progress they feel like they’re making. Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr., excellent as always) may be a great reporter, flashy and smart, but he chases this great lead right into a full-blown drug addiction and the end of a career. One by one, we see the way the case runs over the very people who are supposed to solve it. By the time the film gets to Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), he’s not the hero or even the lead. He’s just one more person who gets pulled in by the game, the challenge, the arrogance of Zodiac’s game. The fact that he taunted the police, the way he bragged about hiding his identity in plain view... it’s infuriating. And the urge to find him, to break that arrogance... it’s like a siren’s song to these genuinely good men, each of them crashing on the rocks in their own way. I’ve read a lot of people who hate Graysmith and his books who seem determined to discredit this film sight unseen. Don’t do that. This film may be based on those books, but it’s as much a comment on Graysmith’s reasons for writing them as it is an adaptation. I don’t think Graysmith is a sympathetic character in the least. He’s barely an entire human being as envisioned by the film. He’s a guy with no real personality who sees the Zodiac case as a way for him to define himself. He sees these guys like Toschi and Avery, guys who seem larger-than-life, and he thinks that doing something like this will make him someone like them. I think Graysmith comes across as a cold, lonely man, and I would imagine that if he sees this film in any objective way, he’s probably uncomfortable with the portrait it paints. At the very least, he should be.
A film like this, taking place over 20 years and covering so much ground, is an excuse to give a lot of actors small roles designed to give them a moment to shine. Brian Cox has a lot of fun as Melvin Belli.
John Carroll Lynch, one of those familiar faces you’ve seen a thousand times but who you probably don’t know by name, does difficult and exacting work as Arthur Leigh Allen. I don’t see how his family could be upset at the portrayal here, since the filmmakers stick to the facts that have been proven. He’s creepy... but is he evil? I don’t think Lynch plays it that way at all.
Once you’re paranoid, though, as Graysmith is, everyone starts to seem creepy. Ione Skye, who doesn’t work nearly enough, is great in her one sequence, and she strikes just the right note of terror. Clea DuVall only has one scene, but she suggests a whole other film happening just off-camera with the little touches in her work. And my favorite small role in the film is played by Charles Fleischer, best known to most people as the voice of Roger Rabbit.
As great as the talent is in front of the camera, Fincher’s collaborators here are all in top form. David Shire’s one of those composers who has been doing this forever, and he scored some of the great films of the ‘70s, some of the films that Fincher is drawing obvious inspiration from. THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1-2-3. THE CONVERSATION, for god’s sakes. ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN. SHORT TIME. Harris Savides, Fincher’s cinematographer here, is the exact opposite. He’s done less than ten theatrical features, and he’s still evolving as an artist, still figuring himself out. He doesn’t seem to repeat himself at all, which suggests to me that he’s more formidable than some of the one-trick-ponies who may have a signature, but they don’t really have range. Working here with the Viper HD cameras, he’s rendered any argument about the difference between film and high-def fairly pointless. This is a beautiful film, rich in palette, and anyone looking to work with this camera system would do well to study what Fincher’s done here with Savides.
Ultimately, what has stuck with me in the week and a half since I saw the film is the way it refuses to give you any release at the end. This is not a movie that’s interested in making you feel good before you leave the theater. It’s frustrating, and that’s by design. You are left with the same gnawing sense of anxiety that everyone who was involved with the story must have felt every day, and the fact that the movie so completely imparts that emotional experience is the mark of just how successful it is for me.
Knowing that this is the Fincher we’re dealing with now has me practically drooling at the idea of finally seeing BENJAMIN BUTTON later this year. 2007’s going to be a very, very interesting year for fans of this director, who seems to have plenty of surprises left for us.
And with that, I’m off to Pixar. I’ve got more stuff for you later this weekend as soon as I get back.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
PS -- Happy Birthday, Dad!
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles PS -- Happy Birthday, Dad!
