finchers zodiac

Fincher's Zodiac

Over my 22 years I have mostly passively watched films. Very few have

actually caused me to think about it days after watching it for the

first time. Zodiac is the change in that. It is very much a film that

is something that I have changed my initial reaction to it. So there

is the movie that introduced me to Fincher, Fight Club, that has been

my favorite since I have seen enough to effectively gauge a designated

favorite. But this one was so different from his former work. If Seven

was his Ying of serial killers, Zodiac is the Yang. Where Seven takes

on the thrills of the chase, Zodiac takes on the methodical steps of

the chase. Not since JFK has there been a more obsessive procedural.

The movie opens on July 4th, 1969. I think this is where Fincher's

real brilliance shines. It is his ability to completely recreate the

time. He is the master chef who knows exactly the right combination of

music, settings, clothing to feast your eyes on for a night. Faintly

in the background, fireworks being set off just enough to

subconsciously register in your mind almost blinding you from the

complete chaos that was about to take place. For days after Donavan's

"Hurdy Gurdy Man" was stuck in my head, something that I kept echoing

in my head.

Seven, Panic Room, Fight Club, they all seem to have the same style of

visual. The streamline across the floor of Tyler's apartment, the

digital tracking shots that set the layout of Jodie Foster's house,

these are all very much the brand of a "Fincher" film. Zodiac is very

much a Fincher film, but it departs from his usual flamboyant display

of visual prowess. He trades them in for a more subtle, but more

grandiose, approach. This is most apparent with his time passage of

the Golden Gate Bridge and what I have been heard referred as God's

P.O.V. The only shot that reminded me of his normal digital wizardry

was a montage of newspaper clippings, I know he just couldn`t restrain

himself.

David Fincher is no young man, he is in his mid-40's, but you wouldn't

think it from the number of films that he has done or the energy that

they emit. Fight Club is, by far, the best example of this.

Narcissistic, nihilistic, self-destructive, but very much in the vain

of grunge/alternative rock out of the early nineties. It is by far his

masterwork. Although he only has six feature length films to his

credit, it is a career that should be, if not, envied by most

directors. He has managed to take the troubled Aliens3 film out of

trouble and turned it into a film that is very much his own vision,

lead Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman into the depths of Dante's hell in

the literary-seeded thriller Seven, and directed two films about the

paranoia. Lastly, Fight Club, as I mentioned before, his masterwork.

He created the most intriguing, awe-inspiring films of the 90's. It

was paned by critics, but it happens to be one of the most poetic

films about nihilism and the pains of being a youth of the nineties.

Zodiac's most outstanding achievements are the tiny details, mainly

Fincher's attention to the factual accuracies of the film. For the

four different appearances of the Zodiac killer, three different

actors were used. All of them were chosen to match the description

given by the witnesses. The audience doesn't notice that there were

three different actors because like a good filmmaker, Fincher lets us

use our imagination to fill out his face, make conclusions of our own.

Often, I found myself trying to piece the case together on my own. "He

is driving a white car, but in the first killing it was a dark colored

vehicle. He is not the killer, it can't be him." Fincher allows our

mind to play around with the facts, creating our own possibilities and

solutions.

Zodiac marks the Fincher's arrival into the world of not just a great

director, for which he already was, but on the level of more mature

and complex films. The only thing that I truly found lacking was the

use of Graysmith's cartoonist implemented in the story, or actually

Graysmith's destruction of family been more substantial. Wouldn't it

be nice if they took it a little further. But none the less, Zodiac

pushes the levels of on-screen violence, if you want to argue check

out the lake stabbing scene, it tests the audience with its meticulous

detail-centric pacing, it maintains itself to be one of the best films

of 07'. Okay, so the last statement will take a while to prove right,

but you get the gist.

Grade: A