New Review! ZODIAC (2007, dir. David Fincher)
Arden cH-s this movie!
My god! An absolute masterpiece. Phenomenal. I am sufficiently
terrified by this movie. Not I was terrfied while watching it. I am
terrified right now and will continue to be for days. Incredible film
by reliably amazing David Fincher which is rumored to be closing the
2007 Cannes Film Festival this year. (I would have no way of being
able to confirm that... ... ...nooo way...) From the first moment to
the closing credits, Zodiac is a film that rarely gets made anymore.
It's rooted in the style of its predecessors in the genre but can
stand on its own as an incarnation of the cinematic zeigeist. Despite
the David Shire score and the Lumet meets Pakula production design and
panache, it's a solid 2007.
Let's start by saying that the three dreamy leads, Ruffalo (hearts all
over you), Downey, and Gyllenhaal, were all born to play their
respective roles. Gyllenhaal finally turns in his first compelling
post-Darko performance as cartoonist Robert Graysmith who watches the
initial Zodiac investigation from the sidelines only to eventually
shoulder the mystery and compile the mind-numbing amount of
information into two best-selling books on the serial killer. His
bizarre doe-eyed mania does a number on your psyche and you never
settle into really rooting for him. This is deliberate and necessary.
Downey plays an addict as only a recovering addict can, with
unblinking honesty and precision. His rise and fall as San Francisco
Chronicle reporter, Paul Avery, packs one self-effacing punch after
the next until he's sprawled out a bloody pulp of a man. His moment of
glory arrives when he's firing off at a gun range like a deranged
lunatic wearing a white button that reads "I'm Not Avery". And
Ruffalo... gorgeous awkward Ruffalo... gets to play David Toschi, a
hot shot homicide detective who's professional persona was eventually
eciplsed by the movie stars who sought him out to imitate. Like
Ruffalo himself, what Toschi lacked in the finesse department he made
up for with earnestness.
And then there's the killer. The man who brought them all together.
The murders are recreated for the film in such an unpornographic way.
That's the only word I can think to describe them. At the risk of
sounding really boring, since Tarantino, violence in American cinema
has really gotten bad. I can't tell you how many times I've been
sitting in the theater watching some gratuitious stabbing or shooting
and people have cheered. Cheered like ET just flew over the moon. It's
discomforting to say the least. It's also lazy because a lot of the
times its not serving an aesthetic purpose but a visceral and
occasionally narrative one. "Wow. NOTHING is HAPPENING. We should
probably blow someone's head off."
So it's a wonder in this film that Fincher resists a romanticized or
poetic view of violence that (let's be honest) permeated Se7en and
Fight Club. Violence in those films was glorified even if it was to
make a point and not shirk the responsibility of a COMPLETE THOUGHT!
In Zodiac however, we are transported to simpler time. A time when the
loss of a human life onscreen was something of a shock. The opening
murder is a symphony of moment pregnant with unspoken terror that
erupt into a drumroll of bullets. The second murder will haunt me for
several days. The stabbing of two young students at a lake. Fincher's
blatant and severe fidelity to the facts makes for harrowing drama.
And this could be said about practically every sequence in the movie.
Zodiac solicits an emotion I haven't felt in a theater for ages. The
spine tingling worry that you may actually be watching something real.
There's no post-modernist spin on anything. There's no irony. There's
no wink. Once you wander of out the dark and into the sun-soaked
streets of the everyday, the stench of the film and the legacy of the
killer it chronicles will linger. A nagging echo. "Na Na Na NAH Na!
You can't catch me."
Bottom Line: Go. If you didn't like it, fine. I'm not going to argue
about this one.
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