A brief report on Finchers Zodiac
I was thrilled to see an almost entirely finished cut of David Finchers Zodiac Thursday night at a test screening in L.A. Though I didnt think it was quite as good as either Se7en or Fight Club, I nonetheless found it almost consistently compelling, suspenseful, and dramatically effective.
Like in Se7en, Zodiac maintains an almost constant sense of tension and unease during its ambitious depiction of the hunt for the Zodiac killer, spending most of its time on the San Francisco cops (played by Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards) who lead the investigation, and the journalists Paul Avery and Robert Graysmith (Robert Downey Jr, Jake Gyllenhaal) covering the story, but also showing numerous of the Zodiac killers crimes in just enough detail to be wholly disturbing.
The movie, which was shot on uncompressed HD with Grass Valley Viper cameras, looked amazing. It appeared to be projected digitally, and the images were almost entirely noise/grain free, lending the period movie an additional sense of believability and often making me feel like I was there in 70s with the characters, rather than watching a film in a theater. Ive never seen HD look this good. Harris Savidess cinematography, was, as usual, beautiful, with its low-key lighting and subdued hues, and the art direction was authentic and nicely unobtrusive, conveying the proper time period (the film is set mostly in the late 60s and early 70s) without going overboard by throwing a bunch of period kitsch into every frame as some period films do.
The performances were all terrific, particularly Mark Ruffalo as one of the lead investigators, and Robert Downey Jr. as a reporter covering the Zodiac murders. Jake Gyllenhaal does his best work to date as Robert Graysmith, cartoonist-turned-amateur investigator who spends the first half of the movie hovering in the background, fascinated with the Zodiac case, but following it mostly from the sidelines, before taking center stage later in the proceedings, after the cops have all but given up on finding the Zodiac killer. I liked that the story was structured this way, focusing first mostly on the police investigation, then shifting over to Gyllenhaal. Also excellent is John Carroll Lynch (probably best known as Norm son of a Gunderson from Fargo), with his subtly creepy turn as a suspect.
Despite its lengthy running time, the movie almost never drags, and its length allows the story to convincingly depict not only the cops increasing frustration over their inability to find the killer, but to adequately examine both the procedural aspects and the personal toll it took on the principals involved. This is perfect Fincher material, exploring the darker side of human nature, offering no easy answers. The only time the story started to lose me was in its later moments, during Gyllenhaals investigation, when some details/clues he was discovering were presented so quickly in dialogue that I found it hard to follow.
The movie unfolds very much like an All the Presidents Men meets Klute mystery/thriller, as the police and reporters obsessively search for the identity of the Zodiac killer. The movie elicits plenty of genuine suspense from material that could easily have become either dry procedural or routine horror/thriller, though I wish there had been a stronger sense of subtext, drawing parallels between the existence of and hunt for the Zodiac and the political strife of the 70s (Vietnam, Watergate, increasing public disillusionment with government), which would have made the film a deeper and darker experience more akin to The Conversation, Se7en, and Fight Club.
Finchers direction overall seems less Finchery, for lack of a better word, than Se7en or Fight Club; coverage of many scenes feels more conventional than his usually more controlled and careful compositions, though it works for the material; because of the complicated plot -- tons of details and investigation -- his style here often feels more functional, more unobtrusive, more designed to seem transparent and not get in the way of the story (not that it gets in the way of his films, just that the compositions in Se7en and Fight Club were in general prettier to look at, more deliberate).
Still, there are moments here that are pure Fincher, including the appropriately terrifying murder scenes, and you never doubt the sure hand of a master at work throughout the film. One murder scene set during the day at a lakeside was especially effective, since were so conditioned to seeing serial killers strike at night, slinking around in the shadows. Its much scarier and more brazen when theyre just standing there in broad daylight. Its a small detail, but theres a terrific aerial (presumably CG) shot following a cab through the city streets, in which the camera seems to be invisibly locked to the cab, so perfectly in sync it is with the cabs motion, turning precisely with the car as it turns various corners. Finchers taken a hackneyed shot (aerial shot looking straight down, moving over city streets) and put a terrific spin on it.
Loved the reference to Melvin Bellis appearance on the original Star Trek.
The cut we saw seemed almost entirely finished, save for some effects shots (notably, a CG high angle of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a couple of shots near the end, in which the dolly track was blatantly visible, having not yet been digitally removed), and I gather from the preview card questions regarding the end of the film, that the end is still something theyre debating.
I liked the ending (which segues to 1991 from the late 70s), in which one of the Zodiacs surviving victims, Mike Mageau, finally IDs the killer from a mug shot, but despite several title cards worth of coda, I still have questions when the movie was over, most of them pertaining to procedural police issues that werent entirely clear to me by the time the movie had finished.
Also, though theres a scene near the end thats intended to give closure to Gyllenhaals hunt for the Zodiac, I didnt entirely buy that his character would stop his obsessive pursuit of the killer there; even though he finally figured out who the killer was (and realized that there still wasnt anything more than circumstantial evidence linking him to the crimes, thus meaning the police couldnt do anything), you think hed find some way of bringing him to justice.
Obviously, this is based on reality (though apparently theres much debate as to how accurate Graysmiths books are), so they cant have Graysmith gunning down the Zodiac like Dirty Harry gunned down Scorpio, but perhaps some further title card explanation of the intervening years of Graysmiths life, a brief addressing of whether his relationship with his wife was over or whether they reconciled (the implication is that his obsession with finding the Zodiac killer cost him his marriage).
Overall, Zodiac is a terrific film, one that I was long looking forward to, and was not disappointed by. I cant wait to see it again, and I cant wait for the eventual DVD release, which will hopefully offer thorough making of of materials as Finchers previous DVDs did.
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