Zodiac (2007)
David Fincher teaches us how to make serial killer movies
The best part about serial killer movies is not the clue-filled puzzles which keep everyone guessing. For me, it is how each death and each revelation moulds and shapes the characters surrounding them. Whether it be the survivors, the police, the media in the movie or the audiences outside, it takes a toll on our thought process with the gut wrenching details we learn about the killer in the course of the movie. Some of my absolute favourites include 1960 masterpiece Psycho, Oscar winner Silence of the Lambs and the first season of 2014 detective series True Detective. One of those favourites is David Fincher’s 2007 classic Zodiac. It is based on a real life series of murders in the California bay area during late 60s and early 70s. The movie is adopted from a book of the same name written by Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist for San Francisco Chronicle back then. Even though the script has adopted a third person narrative, the events are constructed around Robert Graysmith’s (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) life. Rest of the cast include Robert Downey Jr playing Paul Avery, the lead reporter for the case, Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards as Dave Toschi and Will Armstrong respectively, the detectives on the case.
Following five successive murders across different counties in San Francisco bay , the reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle receive a series teasing codes and letters giving clues about the killer and his motives. Paul Avery, the ace reporter at the Chronicle takes on the case and starts pestering the detectives for updates. Robert Graysmith, the paper’s geeky and newly hired cartoonist who develops an amateur enthusiasm for the case, which becomes an obsession later on. Their work keeps hindering and helping inspectors David Toschi and William Armstrong as they try to find the killer. What follows is a 30 year saga of puzzles and interrogations finally leading up to early 90s, when most of the evidence is lost, perspectives are muddled and three different police jurisdictions have collectively lost grip on the conclusion. The film ends on a still note, with Graysmith staring into the killer’s eyes for few seconds and then moving on to lead his disrupted life.
The most evidently striking factor in the movie is how the characters and details are packed across a long span of time. The movie gives us times, days and dates at the bottom of the screen, with the only purpose to underline how the case seems to stretch out to infinity. Most of the credit here goes to the director himself, whom I will talk about separately. The film is part police procedural, part investigative journalism. We have two storylines running in parallel which frequently intersect each other, each having two lead characters . The fifth character, Zodiac himself, does his work in the earlier scenes of the film, and only then, when he starts sending coded letters to newspapers, the police and reporters start doing theirs. Notice that the Zodiac here doesn’t really play a role thematically. The movie only focuses on Zodiac’s crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the reasoning behind them. There is no psychology here, and no symbolism either. What Fincher instead does is, follows the character arcs religiously, gives intricate details about them, and leads them to a conclusion. For instance, Zodiac is a guy who was ignored all throughout his life. He spent a non-eventful life with no real people surrounding him. The murders feel like a redemption to him, like they were a source of fun in his otherwise uninteresting life. Through puzzling ciphers and breaking patterns in his murders he tries to fill up his empty void of ‘thrill’ in life. Inspite of all that, we see it doesn’t fundamentally change his life. This was a man who could lay low for months or years between his bloody crimes, while his pursuers — cops, reporters — grew older. So boring.
In the case of the police officers, both are shown to have contrasting outlooks. While, Toschi is a dedicated cop who plays by the books, Will is more of a family first guy, who gets taunted by the details of the case as it unfolds. Will later on decides to transfer himself from homicide, meanwhile Toschi finds himself demoted due to a self inflicted scandal, leading him to lose interest in the case. Even though there are intermittent sparks of curiosity in him as Graysmith finds new clues about the case, the motivation seems to have lost. At the chronicle, we have Paul Avery, who receives a death threat from Zodiac, which gets him onto the hook. He becomes increasingly involved in the case to the point where he slips into alcoholism. As the case stretches over decades, we see Avery descending from a fighting journalist to a lousy alcoholic who has given up on his life. The only character who remains stubborn throughout the case is Graysmith. He loses his job, his wife and kids just from an obsession he picked up through the news and eavesdropping on police officers. His obsession is predictable, as he himself reveals his interest in puzzles. He somehow manages to solve the case, at the expense of his career and personal life. It all goes down the drain, as all the evidence he collects is circumstantial and not enough to lead to any arrests. His is the only character which completes a full circle, from the point of feeling powerless because of the all the neglect and disregard he faces at his job to the point where he actually accomplishes something, and yet is not able to do anything about it.
Except for Jake Gyllenhaal, I found rest of the actors mostly opaque, with even the likes of Mark Ruffalo seeming to transform into a typecast cop towards the end. The movie was always about David Fincher. Right from the casting, where he chose popular and rememberable faces to accommodate a large number of characters, to avoiding cliched cop chases. He knows how to separate true crime movies from action crime, without losing the suspense and keeping the audience tense in every single scene.( The basement scene is my favourite out of all).
Structurally also, Fincher has a very unique style as his composition and editing are more classical even though the movie is definitely a modern crime thriller. The film is cleanly divided into two sections. The first section occupies most of the runtime, largely concerning the murders and the investigations. It opens in 1969, and it has more of browns and grays, as it feels very dark and moody, drained of all bright colours. It’s almost like a disaster movie, as if something apocalyptic is always happening. Constant reminders of how much time has past since the last murder only ramp up the anxiety. The second one involves Graysmith’s transformation of the murders and the investigations into a narrative. Fincher brings in all the vibrant hues, changing the paints of the walls, trying to bring in some tempo into the case. His feel for detail is terrific: the chewed pencils, the typewriters and also Graysmith’s distinctive choice of drink, all feel very real.
What makes ‘Zodiac’ authentic is the way it avoids chases, shootouts and false climaxes, and just follows the methodical progress of police work and investigative journalism into weaving their magic. The story structure is as intricate as the storytelling is seamless, with multiple time-and-place interludes, all of which makes it a very entertaining watch.
