As David Fincher's "Zodiac" began, I noticed something strange. The Paramount logo that opens the film is not the modern logo we've become accustomed to, but instead the classic grainy blue, 2-D image of a mountain from the films of yesteryear. The decision to do this was brilliant, in hindsight, because the whole film feels like a relic of the seventies. From the visual style to the storytelling techniques, this is a film that has far more in common with something like "All the President's Men" than Fincher's own "Se7en." This is not a flashy, gruesome serial killer thriller that many would expect from Fincher. Instead it's something far more methodical. It may be March, but we already have the first contender for best film of the year.The story of the Zodiac killer is a strange one. He killed a few people in the Vallejo and Napa area before he started sending in letters to the San Francisco Chronicle demanding that ciphers he'd made be printed in the paper. The Bay Area fell into a panic as his letters were printed and he'd make frightening threats that more often than not never came to pass. He was a man who seemed to relish in the way he could manipulate the public, throwing everyone into a panic over things he had no intention of ever doing. What's interesting, though, is that he was really only proven to have killed five people, and he pretty much disappeared a few years after his first letter to the Chronicle, yet his story remains so fascinating today because he was never caught. Therein lies perhaps the biggest difficulty in making a movie about the Zodiac killer. What Fincher did instead was make a movie not about a killer, but about the men who fruitlessly devoted their lives to catching this man.
The story centers around three men: Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a cartoonist at the Chronicle, Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.) is the reporter who writes about the killer, and David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) is the detective assigned the case. These three men's lives intersect throughout the film as each becomes more and more obsessed with the case, to the point that it pretty much destroys their lives. As the lead, Gyllenhaal brings a wide-eyed, youthful enthusiasm to his character. Graysmith sees the case as a puzzle to be solved, and he delights in deciphering the codes the Zodiac sends in. The truly memorable performances, however, come from the other two men. Ruffalo plays his character quietly and simply, yet there is a fire burning within Toschi that refuses to die. There is a scene in which everyone goes to see "Dirty Harry," a film that was inspired by the Zodiac case and released when the trail was just starting become cold. Ruffalo has a great moment where he reacts to the film, as it makes him angry and sad. He wishes he could be Clint Eastwood and catch the killer, but he knows that life doesn't actually work like the movies. It's a subdued but wonderful performance. The real showstopper, though, is clearly Downey. Avery is essentially a smarmy man who loses his grip on reality as the years go by. At one point he begins to fear the Zodiac is after him, and he buys a handgun, turns to drugs, and eventually falls apart completely. Of all the characters in the film, he's the one who had the most promising future, yet he fell the hardest. It's a character whose life mirrors Downey's own rise and fall, and he really knocks it out of the park.
The men in the film become obsessed with the facts and details of the case, and Fincher has created a film in which he tries to make the audience feel that obsession through the abundance of information given to us. Essentially, the film wants us to have all the clues that these men had so that when it's over we can try and make our own conclusions as to who might be the killer. Fincher seems determined not to give us his version of what happened, but instead what the documents say happened. The fact that two of the Zodiac's murders are not depicted in the film is a result of the fact that there were no survivors and no witnesses, and thus any scene depicting their murder would simply be the director making up what he thinks happened. Fincher even went so far as to cast different actors in every scene in which the Zodiac kills someone so that when we are given the suspects, we can't assume it's one guy over the other simply because he might be physically similar to whoever we saw earlier in the film. Yes, the film does make it abundantly clear that each character has their own favorite suspect, but we don't feel as though Fincher is ever endorsing these choices, simply showing us who was a suspect. The film ends with a pretty clear choice as to who the Zodiac really was, but Fincher is still insistent that there is evidence that makes this man's involvement questionable. By film's end you really get a sense of how easy it could be to become obsessed with it all, how each little new fact could send you on a weeks long journey that would end up taking you nowhere.
Fincher is best known for his overly stylized films, in which he seems to value style over substance (by no means a bad thing, he makes great entertainment pieces). In keeping with his "just the facts" attitude, though, this is a film largely devoid of any Fincherisms. There is a scene in which the walls of the Chronicle turn into the words from the Zodiac letters, and another in which we see the Transamerica Pyramid construct itself in order to show us how fast time has flown by for these people, but other than that he is very straightforward in his storytelling. I was highly impressed with his restraint, yet at the same time it is a very thrilling movie in an unconventional sense. The film just has this ominous mood throughout, and I think that it's a testament to Fincher's capabilities as a storyteller that he could make what is essentially a dialogue driven three hour crime procedural into something so gripping. Honestly, I went into this film hoping for another "Se7en," but that's not what I got. What I got instead was something more mature, less flashy, and ultimately more fulfilling. What I got may just be a masterpiece.
