zodiac david fincher 2007

Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)

Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)

Excerpt:

Perhaps the single most surprising fact about "Zodiac" is that David

Fincher directed it--one might think that Alan J. Pakula had been

raised from his grave and given a far larger budget than when he did

"All the President's Men" (1976), or that Sidney Lumet had been asked

to remake his "Prince of the City" (1981) with a hunt for a psychopath

at its center, or that Curtis Hanson--an excellent thriller filmmaker

who raised the stakes mid-career when he made his epic "L.A.

Confidential" (1997)--had suddenly developed a taste for serial

killers. Fincher, a music video director turned feature filmmaker,

showed such taste early on; he first became famous for the grotesque

"Se7en" (1995--about a man who staged his killings around the Seven

Deadly Sins), but had already made an earlier film about a killer that

happened to be nonhuman ("Alien3," 1992) and later, a film about a

serial prankster turned terrorist ("Fight Club," 1999). Whatever the

story, Fincher's camera seems to constantly seek out and focus on the

character living or even temporarily thrown outside the norm (of

society, of humanity) looking in, his actions dictated by his needs or

obsessions.

A quick comparison of the two filmmakers should be instructive. I've

always admired Hanson's attention to detail, storytelling skill, and

films from "L.A. Confidential" to "8 Mile" (2002) to his latest this

year, "Lucky You;" overall, he makes clearer, more coherent films than

Fincher. But with Fincher I've always had expectations, often

disappointed by his not exactly disciplined approach--"Alien3" was a

shaky-camera mess, "Se7en's" plot was preposterous (genius killer who

slays to make a philosophical point?), and "Fight Club" was brilliant

satire that degenerated into comic-book ludicrousness (a worldwide

conspiracy of bomb-planting waiters?). That said, there's a look to

each of his films that often varied in tone and palette (from the

ambers of "Alien3" to the murky grays of "Se7en" to the sumptuous

sheen of "Fight Club"), but was almost always ringed by an

encroaching, ever-present gloom. Few recent Hollywood filmmakers made

shadows as menacing as Fincher and you suspect that if you ever opened

up his cranium and peered inside, you'd find the world being viewed

through similarly darkened lenses.