Zodiac (2007) ***/*****
So, David Fincher is a good director. You give David Fincher a movie to make, chances are he’s going to put it together better than just about anybody else you could scrounge up. Problem is, David Fincher is not a writer. In a medium where a piece of work is only marginally better or worse than it’s script, this is a problem. Sure, a great director can make a bad script into a better movie than it should be, and sure, a bad director can turn a good script into more of a train wreck than it should have been; but the script is the foundation. You can’t have a good movie without a good script. David Fincher has made a couple films that I really enjoy, and one of my favorites of all time. I would list him among my favorite filmmakers. The difference between him and those few chosen others that tickle my fancy, however, is that by and large all of the other modern directors that I view as being “elite” filmmakers also have at least a hand in crafting their own scripts.
To be clearer, I’ll do a brief rundown of what I feel about Fincher’s feature films to date. Alien 3 I don’t rate for two reasons; the first being that I have no love for the Alien franchise, and the second being that the film was clearly a big budget feature that was more in the hands of the studio financially backing it than it was in the hands of the first time filmmaker they recruited to helm it. Se7en is a film that I enjoy very much. It is the classic case of a script that I feel was made into a better movie than it should have been by good direction. The great casting, the direction of the actors, the stylish way it was shot, and the moody production design of the piece heightened a slightly exploitive and cartoonish serial killer tale into something artistic. The Game should have been a completely forgettable and generic Mystery/Thriller film that became something slightly more under Fincher’s eye. The beautiful way in which the film was shot, and the care with which it was paced made it a film that I enjoy revisiting every now and again, and has kept it from disappearing off my radar. Fight Club I consider to be a flawless film. The script, one of the most genius adaptations of a novel I’ve ever seen, was outstanding and fit perfectly with Fincher’s style and sensibility. Panic Room is where I began to feel a little bit weary about Davey-boy. Panic Room was a tedious, forgettable script made to look pretty and interesting by Fincher’s now trademark moody cinematography and CGI camera trickery. Here I felt that Fincher might have been just coasting on the few tricks that brought him to the game…take a mediocre script, give it the Fincher treatment, cash the check. With this bit of fear at the forefront of my mind I came into Zodiac.
Zodiac shows us a more subdued David Fincher than the one who gave us Panic Room. Instead of being a 60s era police procedural shot with the David Fincher bag of tricks to make it look pretty, it was a 60s era police procedural shot to look like a bleak, realist film deeply rooted in the cultural milieu of the time. Sure there were a couple needlessly showy transition shots that utilized Fincher’s “this should be impossible to shoot!” CG recreations of reality, but they were few and far between, and hardly noticeable unless you were looking for them. This pleased me. It seemed that Fincher was dedicated to his script and wanted to see it realized correctly, not just flashily. Despite this, however, I just wasn’t in love with this script as much as Fincher seemed to be.
The film is grounded, realist. It is based on the case files of a real, and infamous, series of murders that took place over the span of a decade or so in California. My problem with this is that reality is boring. I don’t believe that anyone since Plato has had a problem with the fact that art and fiction contain unrealistic situations and characters. The beauty of fiction is not the way in which it creates a perfect recreation of our reality, but in how it’s hyper real universe is still able to tell us truths about ourselves and our world while being at the same time escapist. Plainly stated, this movie is boring. It seems to be exhaustively researched and produced to be as much like a documentary of this case as it could be, and therein lie its faults.
Because it is real none of the characters are particularly memorable or interesting. Because it is real the story doesn’t follow any sort of traditional narrative structure or provide us with a sensible conclusion. Because it is real too much necessary information is crammed in, making the film way longer than it should have been and slightly tedious. Because it is real a too large cast is introduced and the screenwriter is forced to define people through outlandish quirks rather than three dimensional characterization, so that we will remember who is who.
That being said, there is still plenty to like here. It is shot well, feels authentic in a great way, has some good acting, and remains at least basely interesting throughout. The opening scene, depicting a grizzly murder taking place in an idealistic, almost fairytale 60s era Fourth of July celebration captured my interest. The subsequent murders were depicted in a similarly captivating fashion. But, once the murders were over and the film focused fully on the detective work, it lost me. For my tastes, Zodiac loses the “delight” part of didactic art that makes movie-going such a rewarding enterprise. I went to see a Hollywood feature, and instead felt like I was seeing a documentary.
As far as the principle cast goes, pretty much everyone does a solid job from top to bottom. Despite the fact that each actor is scratching and clawing for screen time and is trying to recreate a real person rather than a cinematic character, everyone seems fully immersed and believable in their roles, allowing you to sympathize with their various trials and tribulations.
Mark Ruffalo deserves special mention, as despite the fact that his character of Inspector Toschi isn’t particularly well defined other than he seems to be a dedicated policeman who loves Animal Crackers, it is almost impossible to take your eyes off of him whenever he is on screen. He seems to have enveloped himself completely in the role, and he makes you feel for his character even though it doesn’t exist in the story or have a purpose other than for the reason that there really was an Inspector Toschi who really did do most of the work on this very real case. Ruffalo makes Toschi feel like somebody you know and can immediately empathize with.
Jake Gyllenhaal, like always, was awkward and annoying in his role of Robert Graysmith, a newspaper cartoonist who is the closest thing that we get to a protagonist. The problem is, just like in every other movie I’ve seen him in, the other characters react to Gyllenhaal’s character as if he is supposed to be awkward and annoying. I still am unable to tell if Gyllenhaal is a gifted actor, or just an awkward, annoying dufus who keeps getting cast in the perfect roles.
Other than those two, Robert Downey Jr. plays a counterculture, addict reporter who I found (perhaps purposefully) unlikable, Anthony Edwards plays himself as Mark Ruffalo’s partner, and Brian Cox plays Brian Cox as some sort of psychologist who seemed to come out of nowhere and whose part in the narrative I didn’t really understand. I like what Brian Cox brings to the table, but the amount of movies he’s brought this to the table for over the past five years is getting to be pretty ridiculous. It seems like every other week I’m seeing Brian Cox play a rich old British doctor of some sort in a new movie. His current over saturation is worse than Buscemi and Jackson at their peaks in the mid nineties.
So, to wrap things up, this film looks good, is well acted, but is ultimately a bore. I desperately want to love another David Fincher film but, unfortunately, it has now been made clear to me that a man is only slightly better or worse than the script he is working with, and David Fincher doesn’t seem to always be interested in the same sorts of scripts that I am. David Fincher made Zodiac the best that it could have been made. The problem is, Zodiac is not a movie that I particularly wanted to see. I want to see David Fincher making hip, stylish, post-modern masterpieces; not long, boring, realistic portrayals of realistic characters wading through realistic facts in order to come to realistically muddled conclusions. Somebody give this guy another home run script already!
