Review of Zodiac (2007) by Markb. — 23 Mar 2007

Director David Fincher is certainly both a sick puppy and an odd duck. Who else would begin Alien3 by, in the first few minutes, unceremoniously killing off little Newt, the surrogate daughter figure that Sigourney Weaver's Riplet spent all of Aliens trying to protect? Who else deserves the credit/ blame for Se7en, the inadvertent father of the torture-porn genre that later brought us Saw and all its sequels and knockoffs? Who else's directorial vision could mesh so perfectly with Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk's VERY uniquely quirky, nightmarish and nihilistic voice? And the most fascinating thing about Fincher is that with Zodiac he proves himself to be a total trickster; just when you think you've got him pegged as a tremendously skilled but thoroughly heartless sadist, he upends all expectations by making his most humane movie to date.

..and it's about a serial killer! Long, obsessively meticulous and thoroughly fascinating, Fincher's Zodiac isn't as concerned about the Zodiac Killer's murders (which are depicted with extreme empathy for the victims) but with the trail of LIVING casualties left in his wake as newspapermen and cops, unable to track him down or absolutely identify him, suffer the destruction of careers, marriages and physical and mental health in their obsessive, Ahab-like pursuit.

(San Fransisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, played by Robert Downey Jr. in a performance that certainly would've netted him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination next year had this movie been released a little later and made a lot more, arguably suffers the most, but it's hard not to watch the same paper's editorial cartoonist Robert graysmith, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, torpedo his ten-year marriage by completely ignoring it in pursuit of Zodiac without concluding that his obsession is the most disturbing.

..especially given that his wife, Melanie, is played by Chloe Sevigny who, wearing overalls in half the movie and huge glasses throughout, would handily defeat any litter of kittens in an adorableness runoff.

) The tragedy of Avery's, Graysmith's and police inspector David Toschi's (Mark Ruffalo) repeatedly frustrated attempts to nail Zodiac's identity lies in the time period; in just a few years the use of advanced computer cross-checking and other capabilities, extremely sensitive DNA testing capacities that would've probably caught Zodiac's slightest glitch, and all sorts of other aids to detection that all CSI viewers thoroughly take for granted would have all but assured that they'd get their man and make it stick.

That's why the genius of Fincher's direction lies in his making this as much a period piece as any Jane Austen adaptation; just as Fincher cleverly communicated our culture's dependence on and worship of consumerism in Fight Club by including a brand name in nearly every shot, here he features in almost every frame a visual or verbal reference to an objest or item that would be totally at home thirty or so years ago but totally alien today.

(My two favorite references: a comment by the San Fransisco police noting that one of their offices hasn't got one of those newfangled fax machines...and Avery, at a pivotal point, playing around with a brand new, almost unbearably exciting 1975 video game known as "Pong".

) Admittedly, sitting through a nearly three hour movie dealing with a series of crimes that never quite gets solved, therefore effectively denying the audience an emotional release it's perfectly reasonable to want and expect at the movies is a tough way to spend a Saturday night after a long hard work week, so this movie's disappointing box office was not only inevitable but somewhat understandable.

But to those who take the chance (and who later rally around this film, making it the cult item it'll undoubtedly become) Zodiac is not only one of the best films about the 1970s ever made (without so much as a single Bee Gees record in it) but can comfortably be mentioned in a breath with Robert Altman's Nashville and Francis Ford Coppola's first two Godfather movies as one of the great epics OF the 1970s.