zodiac

Zodiac

"Zodiac"

USA. 2007. Directed by David Fincher. Screenplay by James Vanderbilt.

Based on the novel by Robert Graysmith. Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal,

Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey, Jr., Elias Koteas, Chloe

Sevigny, Brian Cox and Dermot Mulroney.

Rating: ***�

Whenever a series of murders go unsolved and unpunished, there is an

inherent human drive and fascination to find the culprit because we

want that person to be brought to justice. That drive is only further

infuriating when the suspect takes it upon himself to delude the

masses and set his own mystery almost as a challenge to the public.

Jack the Ripper, of course, was the infamous, unapprehended killer

that haunted Britain in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century

and then there was the Zodiac killer for California in the 1960s and

1970s.

David Fincher's Zodiac chronicles the real-life events of the latter

case and focuses not so much on the serial killer himself but more on

the paranoia and intrigue it instilled on the people who tried to

solve the case. What made it more taunting and exasperating is that

the Zodiac killer narcissistically sparked the controversy towards

himself. He sent ciphers and encrypted letters to the police and the

San Francisco Chronicle and dared everyone in California to crack his

identity. If that wasn't bad enough, he made it a point to pose veiled

threats on school children, instilling fear all across the state.

The film opens with a series of rather chilling and bloody killings at

the hands of the Zodiac in 1969 (five were confirmed to be done by him

though he tried to claim credit for others as well). One would expect

the director, David Fincher of Se7en to push further with his gruesome

depiction but Fincher wisely chooses to be more tasteful in depicting

these real-life murders that spanned across different counties in

California. The acts are cold and merciless but the camera does not

linger there.

From that point on, Zodiac turns into a straightforward police

procedural that spans several decades and one of the most impressive

qualities of the screenplay by James Vanderbilt, who adapted from

Robert Graysmith's original novel, is its narrative clarity. There is

a labyrinth of clues that the detectives and reporters follow all

throughout the film's 160-minute runtime and we are never confused as

to how the characters arrive at their conclusions and theories

throughout the investigation. And though the story does provide its

own theory of its prime suspect, it does not make the blunder that the

recent Jack the Ripper film, From Hell made in providing a pat

resolution that gives the illusion that the killer was actually

fingered.

We follow several key characters such as the detectives including Dave

Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) and police

sergeant Jack Mulanax and the newspapermen like editorial cartoonist,

Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and reporter Paul Avery (Robert

Downey, Jr.). They all become singularly invested in catching the

killer after both parties receive letters with coded pictograms. The

crucial difference between the two groups, however, is that whereas

the detectives have a professional obsession to apprehend the suspect,

the reporters harbor a more personal one.

Frustration is the emotion that drives the film and the characters'

obsession, which gradually overwhelms and consumes them. DNA testing

could be done with the killer's envelope seal in current day but of

course this was beyond the time of investigation. We see the

detectives' aggravation at the mismatch between circumstantial

evidence and the physical handwriting evidence, and particularly their

inability to properly coordinate their evidence across counties. The

latter fact is only further underlined when Avery sets out to track

the killer down himself, even purchasing a gun, after he receives a

personal death threat from the Zodiac. That obsession is ultimately

transferred to Graysmith, who sets it as his personal mission to solve

the Zodiac puzzle, to the detriment of his marriage to Melanie (Chloe

Sevigny).

The film is thoroughly meticulous in capturing all of this minutiae

and giving a real feel of investigative police work, warts and all. It

shows that the average day of police work is far from the law-bending,

big action scenes featured in Dirty Harry, which Zodiac puts into its

widely known cultural context. Rather, an inspector's job is rooted in

patiently and doggedly sifting through a crime scene and somehow

piecing enough evidence together just to get a proper search warrant.

The scenes inside the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle also feel

genuine in showing how a personal fascination with a killer serves

almost as an escape to the mundane routine of normal day of

journalism.

Fincher is an accomplished visual stylist as seen in his previous

features and this is his best and most mature film because he uses it

more sparingly here. There are a few of his trademark slightly

off-angle shots and other creative visual tricks but he does not let

his style overshadow his rich substance this time around, as he did

with the vastly overrated Fight Club. He knows he has a sprawling

period crime story to tell with tact as well as respect and his

directing of suspense is tighter here, as it was with his superior

works such as Se7en and Panic Room, because it builds naturally out of

circumstance and investigative details rather than simply visual

trickery.

When it comes to knowing about a serial killer that was never caught,

I'm personally ambivalent towards the wildfire buzz that surrounds the

real crimes. It is appropriate that much effort is devoted to nabbing

the suspect. But when is it is finally to no avail, there is an

unsettling sense of unfairness and sadness that the killer not only

got away with committing evil but gained wretched attention for it.

That's an unspoken feeling the people involved in Zodiac will harbor

probably for the rest of their lives.