zodiac

ZODIAC

I stood in line Friday night aghast. EVERYBODY was going to see

ZODIAC. I was confused. Having done a little homework before coming to

the theater, I knew what ZODIAC was, and I was shocked as to the

amount of people lining up to see it. Teenagers, couples, groups of

40-something moms. Didn't these people know that ZODIAC was a

three-hour long period-piece/police procedural? With no truly bankable

stars and no real ending? Then I started listening to their

conversations. And then...

...I remembered the trailers. FROM THE DIRECTOR OF SEVEN! Quick cuts

of women screaming and lots of heavy sound design. And then I realized

these people were going to see a slasher movie. BASED ON A TRUE STORY

is a famously-used Horror film-marketing campaign. It was first used

successfully (I believe) in advertising THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Note to audiences everywhere: Horror films are NEVER based on a true

story. These films are "based" on true stories like: somebody did

something to somebody sometime with something somewhere. There. That's

the horror film formula. Fill in the blanks and go make a movie that

is "based on a true story."

For all these people knew or cared, the Zodiac killer might well have

been the Jigsaw killer.

And so it was that out of the hundreds of people bored to tears at one

o'clock in the morning when the credits rolled, I sat with a smile on

my face. ZODIAC is not just a good film. It is a great film. If it had

been released last year, it would have struggled with a spot for one

of my favorites (Pan's Labyrinth, The Fountain, Apocalypto, if you

must know).

But this is not a horror film. This is an investigation film. This

film is not Seven or Saw or Nightmare on Elm Street. This film is All

the President's Men. It's JFK.

This film is a three hour odyssey of many characters over fifteen

years of obsessing over a high-profile serial killer with (considering

the serial killers of later years) a relatively low kill count (I say

that purposely knowing how callous it sounds, but it is one of the

excuses given to give up on the case). These characters are destroyed

by Zodiac. Not through the machinations of a genius madman, as a true

horror film or thriller would show, but instead through the very

nature of obsession, the frailty of man's own makeup, his inability to

let go of the unknown and his eventual self-destruction when failure

is again and again the only achieved result.

In fact, after watching this film, you realize that the Zodiac Killer

was not a genius at all, just very, very lucky. For all his caution,

he was nearly caught several times, only to slip through at the last

moment. Or was he? The fact is, this is an unsolved case. Although the

major historical figures involved point their finger fairly certainly

at a particular suspect, the film makes great lengths to remind us no

one was ever charged with the crimes.

ZODIAC begins in the world of journalists. A cartoonist, Robert

Graysmith (a perfectly-awkward Jake Gyllenhaal), is working for the

San Fransisco Chronicle when a cryptic code and a strange letter is

sent to the editor. It is the Zodiac, and it is the beginning of a

long siege of California through what amounted to low-tech terrorism.

Several letters came, followed by occasional murders. Graysmith begins

an unlikely friendship with Paul Avery (the always incredible-when is

this guy going to get an Oscar-Robert Downey Jr.), an arrogant,

boozing crime beat reporter. The first act of the film centers on

these two men and the strange beginning of the time of the Zodiac

Killer. Journalists are at a loss as to how to deal with a character

like the Zodiac. Do you print his cyphers on the front page and give

him more of what he wants in order to avert a threatened killing

spree? Juxtaposed with these rising actions are scenes of the actual

killings themselves. The most drawn out and brutal is the slaying of a

young couple at a lake. It is a stabbing, and I have never seen

anything quite like it in its horror. It felt real, and it was the

first time I can remember feeling that about a scene like this one.

But the murders are the motivators, not the highlight of the film.

The second act begins with the last confirmed kill of the Zodiac

Killer: a cab driver. Investigating the case is David Toschi (Mark

Ruffalo). Ruffalo plays Toschi as Columbo, low key, rumpled and

tenacious, which is ironic, because the real David Tosci was the

true-life inspiration for Steve McQueen's Bullit and Clint Eastwood's

Dirty Harry. This second hour is the world of the police and their

attempts to catch the killer. It is here when you begin to see why it

was Zodiac fell through the cracks. Bad leads, jurisdiction fights,

lack of evidence.

The third hour is about Graysmith's fight to bring Zodiac to justice.

At this point, it is a decade since the first killing. Tosci, Avery

and all the giant figures Graysmith watched attempt to find the Zodiac

are now husks of their former selves. Obsession fully takes Graysmith

into CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND-style craziness as he spurns

his wife and children in his quest. And Graysmith gets close, closer

than anyone ever did.

The film is very much like JFK in that it is based on the books of an

eccentric true life figure who took it upon himself to solve an

unsolvable case. We see how dangerous obsession becomes, as you begin

to reject answers based solely on the fact that they don't fit in with

the truth you want to see. Like the film JFK, this film is about

disseminating vast amounts of information and ideas to the audience.

It is a remarkable feat, and ZODIAC goes beyond JFK in that it plays

fair. While JFK very much points a finger and screams at Clay Shaw,

the Johnson Administration, and the military-industrial complex,

ZODIAC offers its best ideas on who probably was the culprit, but does

so with open reservations. At least half-an-hour of the movie is

dedicated to a red herring, and choices like these on the part of the

film's director David Fincher is what makes this film a stand out.

Zodiac is a remarkable accomplishment for Fincher, who achieved a

perfect combination punch with his post-modern masterpieces SEVEN and

FIGHT CLUB. Those two films were a perfect representation of the

cynicism of the 90s looking into the 21st century. But where SEVEN and

FIGHT CLUB spoke to a younger generation, ZODIAC is a grown up movie.

No flash, no over-the-top style. A good story well told. And based on