AN OPEN-AND-SHUT CAS WHY DAVID FINCHER'S ZODIAC IS THE FILM OF THE YEAR BY KENT JONES LIKE ANOTHER FILM shor in San moments of this "film that feels like being women wandering into Rivette's house of Francisco 50 years earlier, Zodiac wears trapped inside a filing cabinet," any expec- fiction in Celine and Julie, in tbat the its greatness lightly. Which is to say that tations developed by prolonged exposure action seems botb immediate and leg- neither the master of suspense in 1958 to serial-killer narratives, police-procedural endary, as if it has bappened and is bap- nor the digital-era genius oi 2007 set out melodramas, or stories of amateur detec- pening at tbe same time. Fincbet's grasp of to create "art cinema," but arrived there tives will bave been either annihilated or tbe world of bis story is so firm tbat be through a sheer immersion in their hammered into an unrecognizable shape. does the one thing filmmakers never do immediate material and respective senses The story of Zodiac, like that of Ver- with stories set in tbe past: he empties out of craft. Something in these stories tigo, is told in a very unusual tense. We the action and tbe frame, in order to con- incited an unusual depth of response begin, on tbe one band, "then"—in north- centrate on tbe essentials. from both filmmakers, among the most ern California In 1969, when Fincher him- Far from a postmodern contemplation obsessive ever to step behind a camera. self was coming of age in the Bay Area. of information retrieval in a pre-digital age, Something mysterious and intangible. But of course, it is also "now" for the tbis is a big-budget Hollywood project tbat Fincher has never made another movie characters caught in tbe momentum of has walked into greatness through the like Zodiac. Tn the past, he bas sought out pursuit. So far, so normal. But despite all door of entertainment. There is, in James stories tbat seem to have roughly aligned tbe cars and the haircuts and the music, it's Vanderbilt's script, more than a little of the with his temperament, technically and emo- difficult to call tbis a "period film," since bantering and speechifying one finds on tionally. Here, he appears to have shaped it so consistently refuses to fawn over its network TV. For instance. Bill Armstrong everv' square inch of his material, and be own re-creations. Fincher gives us just {Anthony Edwards) keeping bis partner has taken it (or let it take him) to an enough of any given setting, and tbe Dave Toscbi {Mark Ruffalo) supplied extremely fine end point. Just as Hitchcock details are always overshadowed by the witb animal crackers is the stuff of buddy did with Vertigo, be soars well past the manner in whicb the characters move and movies, but sucb moments stand out in a point of a "real movie," as currently interact witbin them. The viewer is placed field tbat has been shorn of everything defined. By the time you get to the final in roughly the same position as the beyond tbe hard labor of information- 44 I FILM COMMENT I January-February 2008 gathering and case-building, cross- imparted through amplification but conci- ground-level motion from a moving car, as hatched with the (mostly) extremely sub- sion. The acting is set to a rhythm that is suburbanites idly twirl tbeir sparklers and tle acting of real-time exhaustion and far more like life than tbe usual boom- amble across tbeir lawns. These are estab- frustration. This is a film of actions and chicka-BOOM action heat. There's a pow-^ lishing shots, but they also initiate a recur- reactions, occurrences and recurrences, erful sense in Zodiac of individual ring visual pattern, a contrast between the patterned and the random. Compared existences being lived out. God-like remove and eye-level proximity. to Zodiac, All the President's Men, a key Tbe film's many locations, from its Over this opening passage, so lovingly real- inspiration, is a parade of behaviorally bome environments to its murder sites to ized yet already so attuned to random glib cbaracter attractions bundled into a the San Francisco Chronicle office, beauty and bebavioi; Fincber lays the rever- neat suspense package. appear both highly specific and haunting. berating chords and plaintive vocals ofthe In Pakula's visually impressive film, Yet there are no time-stopping visions, as Three Dog Night version of "Easy to Be there is a series of dissolves over the heads there are in Se7en and Fight Club. Just as Hard." How the precise placement of this of Hoffman and Redford as they sift in Hitchcock's San Francisco, Fincher's particular recording over these particular through thousands of White House library portraits of places—the corner of Wash- images will play for someone who did not receipts, wbicb reiterates their needle-in-a- ington and Cherry, Lake Berryessa, a grow up in the America of the late Sixties, I haystack bewilderment. Tbe bigh angle is deserted highway outside Modesto at bave no idea. As someone who did, I can revelatory in another sense: such drudgery, night, a decrepit houseboat—are all tbe say that this song seemed to have been the substance of any real investigation, more powerful for appearing incidental. designed to drift over the airwaves from should only be viewed quickly and from a Fincher takes bis ultra-responsive eye for AM transistor radios on just such summer great height for fear of boring the audi- scale, light, and color and his careful cali- nights. Right away, Fincber gives us an ence. Witb an obsessiveness to match tbat bration of mood and sets himself the chal- extremely vivid, class-specific impression of of his heroes and an ironclad responsibility lenge of putting them at tbe service of a what it felt like to be alive in this time and to tbe truth of bis subject, and perhaps out story in which tonal and visual imposi- place, something tbat will remain impor- of sheer mischievous deligbt, Fincber offers tions are beside tbe point. tant throughout the film. the reverse, a movie that places said July 4, 1969. Vallejo, California. We're Most of tbe musical choices have the drudgery front and center. His protagonists looking at the Mare Island Causeway, same devastating tightness: the buildup to understand that payoffs don't come cheap gracefully described from above, as fire- Sly and the Family Stone's "I Wanna Take and that guns are usually found Iong after works flower and wither in a beautifully You Higher" over a spatially ingenious they've stopped smoking, and a couple of rendered night sky (one among many in Zodiac-letter montage [with its digital quick speeches aside, their frustration isn't this film). Fincher cuts to a rhyming positioning of letters and words across January-February2008 I FILM COMMENT I 45 FlNALCUTt2OO7 three-dimensional space, it's even more fisbing trips and Sunday afternoon foot- movies have been devoted to rogue cops exciting than Fight Club's ingenious Ikea cat- ball, all in two quick scenes and about 40 and private eyes getting around the law, alogue descriptions); the incantatory open- words. Clea DuVall as Linda del Buono, the better to get to the next action scene. ing of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" giving ber hundredth jailhouse interview to Tbis is finally not a movie about a ser- over another digital tour-de-force, the fast- the latest Zodiac specialist, her smile bitter, ial killer, but about the real-life exhaustion motion building of the TransAmerica Tower; loose, and haphazardly insinuating, ber of trying to catch one—tbe monumental and Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man," intelligence blunted by tbe tortuous daily difficulty of sifting tbrougb evidence and finally given its creepy due by being married routines of a prison stretcb—again, the building cases, the equally monumental to tbe first murder in a deserted lovers' lane screen time is minimal but tbe impression disappointment of seeing your favorite sus- and reprised over the final credit roll. is lasting, and it's more than a question of pect disqualified, the effort expended to go The murder scenes are quite unlike any- "good aaors." Fincher's complete control back to tbe drawing board. It's a movie thing else in tbe film. We are placed very, and inside-out understanding of bis mater- about getting sucked into tbe vortex of very dose to Mike Mageau and Darlene ial allows bim to make a movie of large- obsession, as tbe expanding distance in Ferrin in their cai; Bryan Hartnell and scale excitements generated by small-scale time from the actual event makes an Cecilia Shepard at the lake, and Kathleen events and activities. His well-known abstraction out of the investigation itself Johns on Highway 13, and freakish details attention to detail rivals Visconti's, but it and turns the case into an urban legend— are foregrounded—Mageau's thick lips, moves in multiple directions at once—an or in tbis case, fodder for a Nixon-era cop Ferrin's lipsticked mouth over a mass of agile, creative, and logistical mind at work movie ("So much for due process," says a braces, tbe starched Republican cleanliness in the age of digital workflow. quietly disgusted Toschi at the premiere of of HartneU and Shepard against the eerily Zodiac's most perfectly realized scene Dirty Harry). In Zodiac, the weight of time pristine landscape around Lake Berryessa. takes place in the film's one solidly indus- presses in from all direaions—the duration Tbeir faces partly obscured by sbadow or trial setting.