A Fascinating Portrait of a Mystery by the Master of Loom

Rating: 9/10 (1 March 2007)

Zodiac reviewed by Samuel Osborn
Consider the complications involved in making Zodiac. Fact: the Zodiac killer was never caught. Fact: Robert Graysmith, the main character, survived to write the books the film is based upon and is still alive today. These two very relevant, very essential facts are widely known. So how does a filmmaker go about making a thriller where any suspense surrounding the hero is moot, and where the audience already knows the ending? These aren't spoilers, they're circumstances. They force Zodiac into uncultivated territory, and it makes for the most beguiling mystery sincewell, since the last time David Fincher made a film about serial killers (Se7en).
What first must be realized, I suppose, is that Zodiac is probably not what audiences expect. The film was meant for an Oscar slating. Planned for November 2006 release, complications in post-production and the final cut pushed it out to its present low-key March release (exact details are sketchy). Typical March fare is stuff like Ghost Rider and 300 (which, by the way, is a glorious piece of work); pulpy films without the earning power for a more lucrative summer release. What this all means for Zodiac is that audiences walk in expecting a lot of blood, a lot of violence, and a lot of hair-tearing insanity from the type of serial killer that gets a March release. Zodiac isn't that film. This isn't even what David Fincher, veteran of such cult favorites as Fight Club and Panic Room, is known for putting out. Zodiac is long (160 minutes), obsessed with tiny evidential details, and the humble owner of only three death sequences, all of which occur within the first hour. The film takes a very sober look at a serial killer, reminding us maybe of Silence of the Lambs. But let's not get too carried away. It is only March, after all.
The film begins with the grim, giddy excitement of discovering an emerging serial murderer. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, a straight-laced cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the three Bay Area publications that, beginning in October of 1969, Zodiac sent his infamous letters to. Paul Avery, a drunken, goofily arrogant journalist played by Robert Downey Jr., covers the murders, putting himself in the way of Inspector Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) and Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), the detectives assigned to the case. After the initial popular craze of the Zodiac plays its course, Mr. Fincher locks the story on the Inspectors' investigation. When they run out of threads and put the case reluctantly down, Mr. Graysmith picks it up, volunteering his own bizarre obsession with the killer.
Where Graysmith was meticulous with his evidence in the book, it seems Fincher here was meticulous with every element of this picture. There have been reports of him demanding, in true Kubrick style, seventy or more takes from his actors. The results, despite some disgruntled remarks from Gyllenhaal, are stunning performances from all the main players. Ruffalo, Downey Jr., Gyllenhaal, and Chloe Sevigny as Graysmith's second wife all put up careful, driven performances.
Mr. Graysmith's book, also enigmatically titled Zodiac, is essentially a documentation of case files. It's dry and painstakingly thorough (read: a back-of-your-seat, have-to-put-down thriller). And when rumors trickled out that Fincher was going to ridiculous lengths to achieve the same level of accuracymurder sequences are supposedly accurate up to the centimeter in terms of the choreographyI admit to having some worries over the same true crime boredom of the book's adaptation.
But thankfully, Screenwriter James Vanderbilt has done a laudable job. As much as Zodiac is about the investigation, it's also about the lives of those obligated and those willing to bring the killer's identity to light. Because of this the film doesn't move like most mystery thrillers do; its pacing is steady and quietly propulsive, allowing the true evidence and mesmerizing reality of the case turn the motor. The thrills swing like mean whispers and arise from the actions of its ultra-dimensional characters.
And although Fincher might have chosen a slower, more thoughtful script, he approaches the text with the same urban Gothic loom he's famous for. The camera work tickles the dark, provocative underbelly of San Francisco at that time period, dynamically gliding through black and blue shadows and warm lamplight glow. His portrait of a mystery is wide and solemn and ponderous, but never to be mistaken with boring. Its barbs are sharp and cruelly disturbing at times. Like in The Game, Fight Club, and Se7en before it, Zodiac displays Fincher's enthrallment in our natural obsession with human destruction, be it mental or physical. And as usual, his dissection of this ironic fascination is utterly satisfying.
Samuel Osborn