Testa's Takes: 'Zodiac'

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

By Matthew Testa

‘Zodiac’

Directed by David Fincher; written by James Vanderbilt
With Jake Gyllenhaal (Robert Graysmith), Mark Ruffalo (Inspector Dave Toschi), Robert Downey Jr. (Paul Avery).
Rated R for some strong killings, language, drug material and brief sexual images.

Most police procedural stories, whether packaged as a “CSI”-like hour of television, an airport novel or a Dirty Harry film, wrap up with a neat resolution.

A string of clues, peppered with a twist or two, lead our hero to a prime suspect who is, by the story’s end, taken down either by the prevailing legal system or a justifiable hail of bullets and a fall from a 40-story building.

David Fincher’s painstakingly detailed, complex “Zodiac,” about the hunt for the infamous Zodiac serial killer who plagued the Bay area in the late ’60s and early ’70s, lacks the streamlined plot and convenient ending of fictional police stories, but it is no less satisfying. A tale of obsession and truth-seeking, “Zodiac” is a tour through the dark fascinations and frustrations of a case that remains unsolved to this day.

The story focuses principally on Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist at The San Francisco Chronicle who was a straight-laced former Eagle Scout with a love of puzzles and anagrams.

When the self-named Zodiac killer begins sending encrypted messages to the Chronicle for publication, Graysmith sits in on the editorial meetings, copying down the ciphers and working on them on his own time.

Before long Graysmith is obsessed, spending more time hovering at the desk of crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr., in the role he was born to play) than he is making cartoon deadlines.

Driven as much by a quest for truth as he is a love of muckraking, Avery at first treats Graysmith as an irritating younger brother.

“What did we discuss about the L-word and how much I don’t like it?” he asks Graysmith. “Well, you’re doing it again – looming.”

But as months and then years go by with no breaks in the case, Graysmith and Avery start sharing information and theories on the case.

Avery has been doing some looming of his own, shadowing the work of San Francisco’s top homicide detective, Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo, also at the top of his game).

Toschi and his partner, Inspector Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), ardently negotiate the dizzying maze of leads, evidence, crackpot confessions, jurisdictional nightmares, forensic clues and media boondoggles that characterized the Zodiac case.

At nearly three hours, this movie tracks each detail with uncommon and seductive thoroughness.

It feels as though we are with these detectives and journalists for every key discovery, peering into files and around corners as they do and the result is transporting.

One senses that the making of this film was as much an obsession for Mr. Fincher as the pursuit of the Zodiac was for the protagonists.

An extensive list of investigators and police consultants thanked in the credits are a testament to the director’s own quest for truth. And the search for truth is what drives this thrilling movie.

As we watch Graysmith poring over evidence, case files and news clippings, it’s hard for us to imagine such determination and persistence occurring today.

These days a simple search on the internet is as far as anyone takes an inquiry, journalism is increasingly marginalized by entertainment, and the truth seems less and less relevant (and more open to influence).

“Zodiac” doesn’t moralize about the value of justice or prosecuting a killer, nor does it delve into the reasons Graysmith or anyone else became so engulfed in this case. Obsession doesn’t have a rational motive, Fincher seems to be saying, it is its own end.
PERMALINK:
Testa's Takes: 'Zodiac' | Planet JH News Article: Movie Reviews

Leave a Comment