ZODIAC (2007)

This David Fincher film features actors Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr.

Welcome to my blog post for David Fincher's film Zodiac !

People look at Zodiac as a David Fincher masterpiece. Zodiac is about being stuck in the file cabinets and there is a lot going on in the film, but it is not typically what we think about in Serial Killer films as well as chasing down the bad guy. This is like three separate films because to a certain degree there are three things that we should be keyed into. It has the sense of being a newspaper film like “All the President’s Men” which is a famous depiction/ book about the Washington Post’s investigation into Watergate done by Alan Pakula in 1976 starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. It begins as newspaper based. These letters by the Zodiac were sent to the San Francisco Chronicle taunting, leaving clues, cyphers. 2. Then the police procedural part of it is where we follow two actual detectives Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong played by Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards. In the newspaper version, one of the names to remember is Robert Downey Jr. who plays Paul Avery, the reporter who begins the quest for the Zodiac. 3. The last part is about Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, and he plays a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle named Robert Gracesmith who would eventually write a book about his investigations into the Zodiac. Robert Gracesmith develops a monomaniacal obsession like Captain Ahab in Moby Dick when he becomes obsessed to find the White Whale. Graysmith is a cartoonist yet his life becomes completely sidetracked by the Zodiac because he becomes obsessed with figuring out who the Zodiac is and for a variety of reasons, we get to see throughout the film, there has never been a conclusive as to who the Zodiac killer actually was which may also frustrate , perplex but also provides an interesting lens to think about storytelling, the power of writing, levels of ambiguity that Fincher taps into such as the music scores that are also important here. Some music from Charles Ives is used in the film and there is a pondering of unanswerable questions. The film also focuses on a piece of literature called “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell which is also a feature film. It is about the hunt for human beings. This is the first time David Fincher tried to work with real life events instead of doing it in a sensational way than “Seven” does. There is an overlapping of different genres with different expectations and a lot of this is deeply centered on the place and time all of this happens which is seen in the film’s opening July 4, 1969. We must think of what has transpired in America at this time. The early scenes show a picturesque almost Norman Rockwell sense of America yet that has come directly on the cusp of all the tumult of 1968 between Martin Luther King Jr and Kennedy’s assassinations the riots at the Democratic National Convention, Penn State, then subsequently in the San Francisco area during the time of the late sixties to early seventies which was the Cult Movement of Jim Jones. This would eventually move from San Francisco leaving the country and there is a terrifying very seminal idea of people drinking the Kool aid literally and going to their deaths in the Jim Jones Cult Mass Suicide. A quote from James Ellroy who is the author of “Black Dahlia” says that “people want to be distanced from horror. They want to partake of it as hyperbole, say it can’t happen to them. The film tells you it is unlikely to happen to you, but it could”. To a certain degree, therefore the mixing of elements is so important when beginning to look at this film. The mixing between the newspaper drama, police procedural and the cartoonist/investigator turned obsessed carries a lot of weight for us as a culture in terms of what makes people tick and why they get taken in by certain darker things as well as so much of this film has that kind of rootedness in a time and place of San Francisco and California (late sixties early seventies.) One cannot talk about real life drama without a seminal work by Truman Capote called “In Cold Blood” which was the first time a book shaped the American imagination for true crime. His true crime novel populated and elevated the genre. He took journalism and combined it with character study to look at crimes that he admittedly became obsessed with, and he could not leave behind the details of these killers and what their story was. It was how true crime originated and was published in 1966. The early scenes of Zodiac often have a resonance to the Americana of Norman Rockwell. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” from 1974 was based on loose true events that added to the allure in terms of the police drama, there is a reference to films like “Bullet” from 1968 which Frank Bullet was played by Steve McQueen and there is a sense a lot of that character was modeled on Dave Toschi from this crime sequence of the Zodiac murders. “Dirty Harry” from 1971 and this case has a character named Scorpio that has a sniper and is a nod to the Zodiac also a San Francisco film where Harry Callahan is a take no prisoners heroic violent answer to the Dave Toschi who is methodical and has all of the frustrations of what it is truly like to the police officer on the trail of the ruthless killer. Things changed in terms of the way Fincher approached the Serial Killer genre between the fantastical no place of Seven which does not take place in any major city to the very rooted sense of San Francisco with this particular time and place. The idea of writing plays a central role in this film whether it is note taking or newspaper reporting. Robert Grace smith’s obsessive cataloging of all things related to this Zodiac connects so much of David Fincher’s work. The first scene brings us into a mail cart to how the Zodiac first enters the public imagination and often we are led through with detectives and newspaper writers trying to track down clues. The inevitable sense that oftentimes memories are fragile or two people can see two different things without remembering things exactly it can be somewhat untrustworthy which is the maddening part about watching something like Seven because it enacts what tries to capture what it was like to be on the path of an actual killer like the Zodiac. He clearly wanted the public’s attention and terrorized them in various ways yet the people bringing their skills must often grapple with getting things down right. Even Gracesmith’s character who occupies the latter part of the film and his obsessive need to alter his life to find the answers to know the truth and get to the bottom of things. It is an interesting step back if we think of it in terms of how to develop an understanding of why we get drawn into certain things we do in an obsessive way, and it is fascinating watching the characters as well as the struggle of Mark Ruffalo’s character of Dave Toschi who is trying to live an actual real life. His comradery with Anthony Edward’s character and his own home life as well as Paul Avery played by Robert Downey Jr. is a drunken dissembling sometimes on the verge of an insane newspaper writer who is pushing the boundaries of the case all of the time and often times going way over those boundaries is a character with an interesting balance because he seems to be very laid back, reserved, family oriented, divorcee, devoted to his child, cartoonist and has an interest in puzzles, figuring out or finding clues which becomes part of his allure to his character. Some of these scenes are extremely graphic, violent, and almost uncomfortably which was part of the way of going about making this film to deal with when actually having the details. They are not invented when taken from people’s memories, notebooks or things trying to be tracked down and interviews. It creates an interesting tableau to think about and to consider the world we live in when tracking down killers, amateur sleuths etc. This may be Fincher’s highpoint as a director depending upon one’s point of view and this is powered by the patience of what he is trying to portray. Meghan L. Grady