Zodiac

This is David Fincher’s best film.

Funny thing is, if you adjust for inflation, this was his least-grossing film. Less than Fight Club, which had age-restriction limitations and gained more of a life in the then-new DVD market. Less than The Game, made before Fincher was a name to hang a film on. Less even than Alien 3, which after the rush of opening weekends surely must have died by word-of-mouth.

So why his best? Even his greatest?

First point: if we discount Alien 3 (he did disown it, after all), Zodiac is effectively the mid-point of Fincher’s films to date. After Seven, The Game, Fight Club and Panic Room, and before The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. More on this point later.

Second point: it’s important to consider what this film isn’t, rather than what it is.

It isn’t  a serial killer movie. Nor is it a murder-mystery. Nor is it a police procedural. Nor is it All The President’s Men, despite Fincher citing it as the key influence on the script and tone of the film, as it fails to be a film about a meaningful search for a higher truth and the betterment of society.

The fact that it isn’t a serial killer movie obviously had a major impact on how people received the film upon its release. It was billed as a serial killer story. Most of the publicity in magazines and in the trailers was all about how Fincher – the man who made Seven – was turning his gaze to a real-life, unsolved serial killer story. Even the real life Robert Graysmith – played by Jake Gyllenhall in the movie – spoke of how Fincher had become almost obsessive in his research of the case, to the point where he might even offer a solution in his film.

As a film based on real events, Zodiac is extraordinarily faithful to the truth. Where possible, the filmmakers spoke to eye-witnesses and cross-checked all available perspectives on events. The first documented victims of the Zodiac killer aren’t even shown in the film, because as there were no survivors, there was therefore no way of actually recreating the moment. All speculation was left out.

What you then have is a film that fails to satisfy the viewers who had gained so much appreciation from watching Seven. Despite its bleakness, the narrative of Seven is so artfully conclusive and resolved that an audience leaves the film knowing exactly where they stood in relation to what happened. Kevin Spacey was bad. Morgan Freeman was good. Brad Pitt was compromised, but we feel sorry for him. Bad things happened, but it’s over, and we’re glad it didn’t happen to us. Effectively, a roller coaster, taking you (and your stomach) places you’d rather not go, places you might not expect, but you can get off at the end and stand back and look at it. See how it works and appreciate the craft.

For the first 45 minutes of Zodiac there is the hint that it might go the same way. But it’s not long before the film deviates. Suddenly, crimes the audience witness are not actually those of the serial killer. No facts, no fingerprints, no handwriting (so much handwriting!) leads us to him. The Zodiac is forever at arm’s length, always out of the corner of our eye, and never where we want him to be.

(Interestingly, Fincher cast different actors for every appearance of the Zodiac, as per the descriptions of the eye-witnesses, none of which agree.)

What the audience does get in this film is the failure of police and of the media to understand, explain and identify this killer. Nothing adds up. Graysmith disappears down a rabbit-hole of facts and half-facts and guesses and theories in search of his moment of clarity.

Graysmith: I need to know who he is. I need to stand there, I need to look him in the eye and I need to know that it’s him.

None of this is important for the audience though, in the sense that, Fincher doesn’t want us to solve the case with Graysmith. He doesn’t deliberate over the clues because that’s not the focus. The focus is the search, the yearning for meaning. For one single thing to hang on to in a world that is increasingly disappearing into meaninglessness.

Zodiac charts the passage of time. Numerous montages display this. The characters grow old, move on, forget and let go. Technology is rendered obsolete, cases are left behind, the heroes of today are cartoon characters tomorrow. At one moment, Graysmith witnesses the broad strokes of the Zodiac case recreated in the actual Dirty Harry film. Cheap, brutal, but with closure. And meaningless.

But as Graysmith gets closer and closer to one possible moment, where he can look someone in the eye and just know this one single truth, he becomes Dirty Harry.

Graysmith: Just because you can’t prove it, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

Toschi: Easy, Dirty Harry.

This is Fincher’s statement on today. Film and society. He can’t make another Seven. It’s not real. It’s a thrill, a cheap trick, a spectacle that doesn’t actually change anything. The closest thing he’s made to Seven since was Panic Room, which was ultimately an exercise in style ahead of worthiness. According to Fincher’s Zodiac, life is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate, if one wants moral satisfaction. To succeed is to give up everything else, as in the case of Graysmith.

To return to my first point, this film is the halfway mark for Fincher. Everything since has been much more problematic than his earlier films, despite the reputation that Fight Club and Seven maintain. Benjamin Button is essentially a hymn to the inevitability of death. The Social Network is as daring and crucial to the documentation of contemporary media as Citizen Kane was in its day. And The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo actually managed to do what Panic Room didn’t – take a pulpy, hollow story and make it more than the sum of its parts.

Hopefully, when all’s said and done on Fincher’s career at some distant point in the future, Zodiac will garner much better appreciation than it did upon release. It’s definitely a film worth going back to, but with different expectations.