review zodiac 2007

REVIEW: Zodiac (2007)

How do you make a movie about the hunt for a famous serial killer when

the hunt never really ended and the killer was never really caught?

Especially when almost every piece of evidence seems to contradict

every other piece, multiple "favorite" suspects are still tossed

around and the whole mess is so knotted up and convoluted that there

remains a very good possibility that the so-called "Zodiac" may have

been almost-entirely a creation of hype and hysteria?

If you're David Fincher, a vanguard of the so-called "MTV School" of

directors who's earlier films (chiefly "Se7en" and "Fight Club") are

already pointed to as revered classics by fans and stylistic excess by

critics, the answer seems to be: You pull back. You slow down. You set

yourself a leisurely (but in no way "relaxed") running time of

just-under 3 hours. You focus on what IS knowable: The evidence. The

statements. The contradictions. The suspicions. The history of the

period. You ground your narrative in the exploits of three different

real-life people - a detective, a journalist, a cartoonist - known to

have undertaken three different forms of investigation into the case.

You set up as your theme the psychological and personal toll the

unsolvability of the case takes on them.

Oh, you also make the first real contender for the best movie of 2007.

For the uninitiated, Zodiac was (and may still be) the most

media-involved/driven serial murder case since Jack The Ripper. From

the late-60s to the mid-70s someone calling himself The Zodiac began

sending letters to the publishers of San Fransisco area newspapers,

taking credit for a series of seemingly-isolated local shootings and

stabbings and offering details and (eventually) bloody evidence as

proof; along with crytpic secret-message cyphers and a self-chosen

"logo" that turned the event into a media frenzy. Soon enough he was

claiming credit for murders he may likely have not even committed,

murders were being claimed on his behalf, and eventually it seemed as

though the police were trying to catch not a man, but a force of

nature as real yet imperceptible as the wind - and about as difficult

to capture. To this day, the case remains unsolved; one of the most

notorious "cold cases" ever.

Fincher's film approaches the task of a police procedural which by

necessity-of-facts must actually be ALL about procedure through the

paralell stories of three men: David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) a police

detective who's assignment to a single killing ends up turning him

into law-enforcement's "face" in the Zodiac killings, Paul Avery

(Robert Downey Jr.) a San Fransisco Chronicle crime reporter who

chases the Zodiac story for the glory and finds himself perhaps too

close, and Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) a Chronicle cartoonist

who's at first mainly involved because his skill at cypher-cracking

finally gets him invited to the "big kids table" (or, rather, the

local watering hole) with the "real" reporters but eventually became

the most obsessed Zodiac-hunter of all; penning the two

highly-regarded books on which the film is based.

One by one, we watch as all three men are consumed by their connection

to Zodiac. Avery, already a self-destructive drunk and cocaine

early-adopter, leaps into the fray for the glory and finds himself

drained all the quicker: Threatened by name in a Zodiac letter,

inspiring local journalists to don "I'm Not Avery" buttons, he sinks

into his own abyss like only Robert Downey Jr. can - embodying a man

who seems to throw his life away on Zodiac because Zodiac was the most

opportune thing to throw it away on at the time.

Inspector Toschi, on the other hand, just wants to find the guy and be

done with it. He didn't bargain on having to chase down something

thats more like a ghost than a man. One moment he's with the first

team on the scene of what looks like a simple robbery/homicide, the

next moment "Zodiac" is ritualistically knifing a couple in the park

dressed up like a C-list supervillian in a black hood and a chest-logo

jumpsuit. The world is spinning out of control with a killer who may

not even fully "exist" at the wheel, and everyone is ready to blame

him. At one point, Toschi is horrified to find himself watching the

big new movie, "Dirty Harry," and realizing that the film is (and

really was) a fanciful vision of "super-cop" taking down a

Zodiac-style madman singlehandedly. This, he acknowledges, is a sign

that he's already lost: The movies already making "what-if?" fantasies

out of it.

And then there's Graysmith. At first, he's just thrilled that his

skill with puzzles and codes makes the other reporters and editors

notice him. Watch how forlorn he looks, gazing longingly into the

smoky bar where all the "big guys" head after work without ever

inviting him... and then how elated he is later when Avery asks him to

come along as discuss Zodiac. Soon the case overtakes and defines him,

even as it becomes less and less clear what if anything he's actually

contributing: "The cartoonist who's investigating Zodiac" is his whole

identity, and we watch as that identity enamors him to a nice girl

(Chloe Sevigny) only to eventually pervade and ruin their marriage.

Through this we come to understand, maybe a little better than the

real Graysmith may like, why it had to be him who probably came the

closest to identifying and naming the "real" Zodiac: Outside of the

case, Toschi had his future and his wife; Avery had his chosen descent

into alchoholic oblivion... but if not Zodiac, what was Graysmith's

purpose, all that time? In an amazing scene in the 3rd Act - which

chiefly concerns Graysmith's year's-later marathon of independent

detective work that led to the book and what it's author believes is

the likeliest suspect for - Graysmith confronts a next-to-last step

witness and nearly breaks down when they fail to give the name he was

sure they'd give. He begins to plead, insisting that they just say the

damn name... and it becomes apparent that he's beginning to not even

care if he gets the right ending, so long as it's finally an ending.

There's a temptation when one is making one of these "period"

detective stories, especially when the period pre-dates the seismic

shift that led to our "digital" world, to dwell on the quaint romance

of the era; especially when all that procedure and evidence hunting

and good ol' fashioned gumshoe work is literally all one has to

construct a movie out of. Indeed, Fincher hits all the stylistic and

mood notes he needs to: He "gets" the aura of clacking typewriters,

shuffling papers and thin haze of cigarette smoke that defines every

interior of the time, the muted earth tones and pastels of 70s urban

interior-design and the expectedly-classy arrangement of

era-appropriate classic songs pulse at the margins of the soundtrack

like a chorus unto themselves - Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" has never

seemed so eerie.

But Fincher and the film are also up to throwing a curveball on the

period-detail side, undercutting the romanticism of the trappings with

a rising drumbeat of hindsight critique: The film effectively does for

the trendy romanticism of analog-era police work what "Letters From

Iwo Jima" did for the romanticism of the Japanese WWII honor-culture;

going behind the details to strip away the mythos. Sure, it's

nostalgiac to look back on the days when cracking the case was about

file-hunting, smoky meetings, worn-out shoes and the rush to find a

phone in time... but "Zodiac" also effortlessly reminds us of what a

pain in the ass it must've been, too. In one tour-de-force piece of

editing, the film lets us watch as multiple police bereaus try to

coordinate their investigations, none of them on the same page and

some clearly not interested in ever being so. It's almost astounding

to be reminded that a mere two decades ago something as vital as

handwriting or fingerprint analysis was still accomplished by taking

sample pages to the offices of an aged scholar and his magnifying

glass.

I can't imagine many audiences being able to watch it and not be

overwhelmed by the unstated but undeniable notion of how "easy" it

would seem to be to catch this creature in our age of DNA, digital

analysis and "C.S.I." In the theater I sat near a group of young women

(older teens, I'd guess) and during the first drawn-out murder

sequence one of them was heard to ask "why don't they call someone!?,"

only to audibly gasp a moment later upon realizing the problem with

her question. It almost seems to suggest that Zodiac "himself" could

only ever have existed under these conditions, rising from the

darkness just at the point when society was starting to move faster

than it's ability to transfer information.

"Zodiac" is a long, dark and deliberate movie; but it's also riveting,

fascinating and crammed with great performances and richly-textured

direction. It's the best new movie you can see in theatres, right now.

Highly, highly reccomended.