David Fincher at His Finest

Rating: 9/10 (25 August 2016)

I have said time and time again David Fincher tops the list for my favourite director. His methodologies are very unusual and his style is very distinct but sometimes I get perplexed by this fact: I do not love his movies. Among my top 5 movies or even top 10 I did not have any Fincher films in the list. While I respect his skills as a director and his unconventional perfectionism, all of his films are very "fine." I did enjoy and was intrigued by all of the films I saw from him, those being "Fight Club," "Se7en" and "The Social Network," however none of them truly resonated with me. Since those films top his best movie lists I believed that those films were the finest he had to offer.
I was wrong.
Zodiac, screened in 2007, is what I believe the best Fincher movie that I have seen. The plot is simple, people are trying to find out the infamous Zodiac killer, but the nuances and details make this movie utterly fascinating. Before each killings the movie would show the victim's lifestyle and the normality, none of the victims knew that they were going to be murdered that day and the movie shows that. Watching that portion makes one feel trapped, helpless like the victims as the murders take place. And Fincher does not hide, every stabs, blood, and wounds are shown, not because of gore for the sake of gore but to show what those murders were. Bloody, painful, unnecessary.
The second act which delves into the investigation is one of the most intense act in a movie. Each scene gives us new clues and the following scenes loses one or two leads. In the beginning we, like the investigators are confident that they will be able to find the killer, but as the movie progresses it is very unclear. The second act gives a slew of great characters that were acted spectacularly, the almost twitchy Graysmith, the fun Avery and weary Toschi all are fleshed out with details by Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo, as well John Carroll Lynch gives a standout performance as Arthur Leigh Allen, one of the prime suspect. While the second act is filled with mostly talking and some may find that boring these actors with Fincher's direction makes for some of the most interesting dialogue scenes.
The problem, and the only flaw that I found with this movie is the transition between the second and the third act. The second act had 3 main characters but the third act has only one, so when the movie narrows the focus down to the one person it lost it's ability to switch characters when a story arc becomes dull. Fortunately it picks itself up as Graysmith become more and more obsessed over the case, mirroring our desire to find the killer. As well narrowing the protagonist to Graysmith introduces a feeling which we haven't felt since the first act ended, fear. Here, we have one guy, not an institution, but a cartoonist chasing down one of history's most infamous serial killer. It's spine tingling, it's on the edge of your seat, it's Fincher.
While researching this film I was shocked at how small of money it had made: about 80 million, compare that to Fincher's recent "bomb" "The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo" which made more than $230 million. Initially I thought way more people should see this movie but perhaps it is because of it's underrated status that I was fully able to enjoy the movie, as I knew the endings of both "Fight Club" and "Se7en" from multiple sources. Don't worry dear readers, I shall not spoil them here. With not knowing the ending I was able to fully enjoy the movie from the beginning to end and I know that I will revisit this movie sometime in the very near future.