AN OPEN-AND-SHUT CASWHY DAVID FINCHER'S ZODIAC IS THE FILM OF THE YEAR BY KENT JONESLIKE ANOTHER FILM shor in SanFrancisco 50 years earlier, Zodiac wearsits greatness lightly. Which is to say thatneither the master of suspense in 1958nor the digital-era genius oi 2007 set outto create "art cinema," but arrived therethrough a sheer immersion in theirimmediate material and respective sensesof craft. Something in these storiesincited an unusual depth of responsefrom both filmmakers, among the mostobsessive ever to step behind a camera.Something mysterious and intangible.

Fincher has never made another movielike Zodiac. Tn the past, he bas sought outstories tbat seem to have roughly alignedwith his temperament, technically and emo-tionally. Here, he appears to have shapedeverv' square inch of his material, and behas taken it (or let it take him) to anextremely fine end point. Just as Hitchcockdid with Vertigo, be soars well past thepoint of a "real movie," as currentlydefined. By the time you get to the final

moments of this "film that feels like beingtrapped inside a filing cabinet," any expec-tations developed by prolonged exposureto serial-killer narratives, police-proceduralmelodramas, or stories of amateur detec-tives will bave been either annihilated orhammered into an unrecognizable shape.

The story of Zodiac, like that of Ver-tigo, is told in a very unusual tense. Webegin, on tbe one band, "then"—in north-ern California In 1969, when Fincher him-self was coming of age in the Bay Area.But of course, it is also "now" for thecharacters caught in tbe momentum ofpursuit. So far, so normal. But despite alltbe cars and the haircuts and the music, it'sdifficult to call tbis a "period film," sinceit so consistently refuses to fawn over itsown re-creations. Fincher gives us justenough of any given setting, and tbedetails are always overshadowed by themanner in whicb the characters move andinteract witbin them. The viewer is placedin roughly the same position as the

women wandering into Rivette's house offiction in Celine and Julie, in tbat theaction seems botb immediate and leg-endary, as if it has bappened and is bap-pening at tbe same time. Fincbet's grasp oftbe world of bis story is so firm tbat bedoes the one thing filmmakers never dowith stories set in tbe past: he empties outthe action and tbe frame, in order to con-centrate on tbe essentials.

Far from a postmodern contemplationof information retrieval in a pre-digital age,tbis is a big-budget Hollywood project tbathas walked into greatness through thedoor of entertainment. There is, in JamesVanderbilt's script, more than a little of thebantering and speechifying one finds onnetwork TV. For instance. Bill Armstrong{Anthony Edwards) keeping bis partnerDave Toscbi {Mark Ruffalo) suppliedwitb animal crackers is the stuff of buddymovies, but sucb moments stand out in afield tbat has been shorn of everythingbeyond tbe hard labor of information-

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gathering and case-building, cross-hatched with the (mostly) extremely sub-tle acting of real-time exhaustion andfrustration. This is a film of actions andreactions, occurrences and recurrences,the patterned and the random. Comparedto Zodiac, All the President's Men, a keyinspiration, is a parade of behaviorallyglib cbaracter attractions bundled into aneat suspense package.

In Pakula's visually impressive film,there is a series of dissolves over the headsof Hoffman and Redford as they siftthrough thousands of White House libraryreceipts, wbicb reiterates their needle-in-a-haystack bewilderment. Tbe bigh angle isrevelatory in another sense: such drudgery,the substance of any real investigation,should only be viewed quickly and from agreat height for fear of boring the audi-ence. Witb an obsessiveness to match tbatof his heroes and an ironclad responsibilityto tbe truth of bis subject, and perhaps outof sheer mischievous deligbt, Fincber offersthe reverse, a movie that places saiddrudgery front and center. His protagonistsunderstand that payoffs don't come cheapand that guns are usually found Iong afterthey've stopped smoking, and a couple ofquick speeches aside, their frustration isn't

imparted through amplification but conci-sion. The acting is set to a rhythm that isfar more like life than tbe usual boom-chicka-BOOM action heat. There's a pow-̂erful sense in Zodiac of individualexistences being lived out.

Tbe film's many locations, from itsbome environments to its murder sites tothe San Francisco Chronicle office,appear both highly specific and haunting.Yet there are no time-stopping visions, asthere are in Se7en and Fight Club. Just asin Hitchcock's San Francisco, Fincher'sportraits of places—the corner of Wash-ington and Cherry, Lake Berryessa, adeserted highway outside Modesto atnight, a decrepit houseboat—are all tbemore powerful for appearing incidental.Fincher takes bis ultra-responsive eye forscale, light, and color and his careful cali-bration of mood and sets himself the chal-lenge of putting them at tbe service of astory in which tonal and visual imposi-tions are beside tbe point.

July 4, 1969. Vallejo, California. We'relooking at the Mare Island Causeway,gracefully described from above, as fire-works flower and wither in a beautifullyrendered night sky (one among many inthis film). Fincher cuts to a rhyming

ground-level motion from a moving car, assuburbanites idly twirl tbeir sparklers andamble across tbeir lawns. These are estab-lishing shots, but they also initiate a recur-ring visual pattern, a contrast betweenGod-like remove and eye-level proximity.Over this opening passage, so lovingly real-ized yet already so attuned to randombeauty and bebavioi; Fincber lays the rever-berating chords and plaintive vocals oftheThree Dog Night version of "Easy to BeHard." How the precise placement of thisparticular recording over these particularimages will play for someone who did notgrow up in the America of the late Sixties, Ibave no idea. As someone who did, I cansay that this song seemed to have beendesigned to drift over the airwaves fromAM transistor radios on just such summernights. Right away, Fincber gives us anextremely vivid, class-specific impression ofwhat it felt like to be alive in this time andplace, something tbat will remain impor-tant throughout the film.

Most of tbe musical choices have thesame devastating tightness: the buildup toSly and the Family Stone's "I Wanna TakeYou Higher" over a spatially ingeniousZodiac-letter montage [with its digitalpositioning of letters and words across

January-February2008 I FILM COMMENT I 45

FlNALCUTt2OO7

three-dimensional space, it's even moreexciting than Fight Club's ingenious Ikea cat-alogue descriptions); the incantatory open-ing of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues"over another digital tour-de-force, the fast-motion building of the TransAmerica Tower;and Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man,"finally given its creepy due by being marriedto tbe first murder in a deserted lovers' laneand reprised over the final credit roll.

The murder scenes are quite unlike any-thing else in tbe film. We are placed very,very dose to Mike Mageau and DarleneFerrin in their cai; Bryan Hartnell andCecilia Shepard at the lake, and KathleenJohns on Highway 13, and freakish detailsare foregrounded—Mageau's thick lips,Ferrin's lipsticked mouth over a mass ofbraces, tbe starched Republican cleanlinessof HartneU and Shepard against the eerilypristine landscape around Lake Berryessa.Tbeir faces partly obscured by sbadow orangled into an insea-like oddness, tbese sit-ting targets are not exactly deprived of tbeirhiimanity but they are objectified, madeinto objects of contemplation, perhapsechoing the removed viewpoint of theZodiac himself. In an striking move,Fincher gives us the aftermaths of tbeattacks, in wbicb tbe (mate) survivors sit Ina state of dazed awe, as if they'd returnedfi-om alien abductions. The victims areunwitting catalysts, allowing a story that'smuch bigger tban them to begin. Yet duringsuch moments, there's a strong sense ofmurder as a tear in the social fabric, anevent both traumatizing and inexplicable.

Zodiac Is not exactly tbe decentered filmtbat some admirers have claimed it to be—it is not the big-budget equivalent of I'mNot There. It is, however, a movie in whicbabsolutely everyone counts, from the alwaysterrific Elias Koteas as Sgt. Jack Mulanax tothe small army of Samaritans wbo come tothe aid of tbe survivors and the cops. Who-ever is on screen, Fincber is responsive totheir shape, affect, posture, voice, the precisemanner in wbich their character relates totbe immediate environment. Jobn Terry asCbarles Theriot, the publisber of tbe Chrort-icle—elegant, stiff-backed, immaculatelydressed, suggesting an entire worid of late-Sixties California aristocracy beyond theframe in a minute or less of screen time.James Le Gros as Vallejo detective Geoi^eBawart—beefy, tanned, and brimming withconfidence, inferring a whole other world afew rungs down the economic ladder, of

fisbing trips and Sunday afternoon foot-ball, all in two quick scenes and about 40words. Clea DuVall as Linda del Buono,giving ber hundredth jailhouse interview tothe latest Zodiac specialist, her smile bitter,loose, and haphazardly insinuating, berintelligence blunted by tbe tortuous dailyroutines of a prison stretcb—again, thescreen time is minimal but tbe impressionis lasting, and it's more than a question of"good aaors." Fincher's complete controland inside-out understanding of bis mater-ial allows bim to make a movie of large-scale excitements generated by small-scaleevents and activities. His well-knownattention to detail rivals Visconti's, but itmoves in multiple directions at once—anagile, creative, and logistical mind at workin the age of digital workflow.

Zodiac's most perfectly realized scenetakes place in the film's one solidly indus-trial setting. The investigating officers,Toschi, Armstrong, and Mulanax, are ledto a penned-off lunchroom in a factory.Their key suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen (JohnCarroll Lynch), shuffles into tbe room. Thescene is reasonably well-written, but it'sperfectly acted, paced, and spatially orga-nized. Tbe excitement is in the sense ofexpeaation, carefully muted but runninglike an electrical current among three copswho tbink tbey've finally hit the investiga-tive jackpot. The quandrangular conversa-tion, the crisscrossing pathways of glances,reactions, and counter-reactions, every urgeto emote tamped back down into blank-faced concentration, accumulates in detailand peaks witb Lynch's deadpan reading ofthe line, "I'm not the Zodiac, and if 1 was Icertainly wouldn't tell you." Fincher endstbe scene with a mirror reversal of its begin-ning, a lateral tracking movement awayfrom the cops behind the grating, under-scored by a near-subliminal rbythmicpounding in the industrial distance.

Cat-and-mouse games between inves-tigators and favorite suspects are nothingnew, but what's notable here is the fine-tuning. The cops aren't studying Allen'spersonality but the array of possible evi-dence he's laying out as he speaks. There'sno giveaway of abnormality (heyond afaintly unpleasant prissiness), no Lecter-isb mind-melding. The drama of tbe sceneis in the intensity of studying, surveying,sizing up witbin tbe limits of tbe law.Fincber and Vanderbilt's thoroughness inthis area is a reminder of bow many

movies have been devoted to rogue copsand private eyes getting around the law,the better to get to the next action scene.

Tbis is finally not a movie about a ser-ial killer, but about the real-life exhaustionof trying to catch one—tbe monumentaldifficulty of sifting tbrougb evidence andbuilding cases, the equally monumentaldisappointment of seeing your favorite sus-pect disqualified, the effort expended to goback to tbe drawing board. It's a movieabout getting sucked into tbe vortex ofobsession, as tbe expanding distance intime from the actual event makes anabstraction out of the investigation itselfand turns the case into an urban legend—or in tbis case, fodder for a Nixon-era copmovie ("So much for due process," says aquietly disgusted Toschi at the premiere ofDirty Harry). In Zodiac, the weight of timepresses in from all direaions—the durationof the actual case, tbe crystalline represen-tation of a world gone by as it migbt bavefilmed itself, and most of all via the quietlyauthoritative acting.

The best performance is the leastassuming. Robert Downey Jr. as tbe flam-boyant Paul Avery is tbe kind of actingthat gets recognized, and not to slight hiswork or tbe extraordinary refinement ofRuffalo, Lyncb, and Koteas, but AnthonyEdwards's brilliant performance in a"thankless" role Is at the heart of Zodiac.His Bill Armstrong is all business all thetime, whether he's making sure bis partneris well-fed or coordinating a murder inves-tigation across three states. Despite tbe facttbat he's been tempered by age, Edwards'sKewpie-doll features, saucer eyes, puckisbmouth, and pleasantly nasal voice arelargely unchanged from bis Top Gun days.Which gives the beavily experienced Arm-strong a nice bint of innocence preserved.Edwards's discipline here matches tbat ofhis direaor. No jumping at hidden emo-tions, no "eloquent silences." Ever>T:hing isimparted through action, and there's astrong intimation of willpower, of psychingup for every occasion after reflexively dis-placing all disappointment and frustration.Tbat's wby his final scene, in whicb be sud-denly tells Toschi that he's asked for a trans-fen, packs such a punch: this is a guy wbowants to unburden bimself of the colossaleffort required to be a good cop.

If Edwards is Zodiac's greatest success(and biggest surprise), its one failurebelongs to Jake Gyllenhaal. His acting

46 FILM COMMENT I January-February 2008

rubs hard against the grain of everythinggood about the movie. He's fine with thestraight-arrow side of Graysmith, but theidea that he's an avid reader is almost aspreposterous as the notion that he wouldhave either the stamina or the obsessiveintensity of focus needed to conduct a pri-vate murder investigation. Imagine Zodiacwith another Graysmith—Ryan Gosling,for instance, or James McAvoy—and you'llsee what I mean. However, Fincher's movieis so perfectly engineered that it can evencarry a babyish actor who goes slack when-ever he's outside his comfort zone.

Just as Hitchcock probably didn't gointo Vertigo looking to create a grand med-itation on time, I think Fincher wanted tomake a movie "based on actual case files"and wound up with something muchgrander. In the end, he arrives at a finephilosophical point—he's gone so deepthat he can't conceivably wind up any-where else. As consumed as it is with fail-ure, Zodiac does, of course, have itstriumph, albeit a private one shared byGraysmith and Toschi. But well beforethen, we're presented with a troublingquestion. Why bother with the Zodiac?Why care about a few unsolved murders,when hundreds have been committed sincein the immediate area? Why indeed? Gray-smith's answer ("Somebody has to"} seemsperfunctory. And despite his tabletopindictment of Allen, and a permanentlyhaunted Mageau making a positive identi-fication in the film's stirring final scene,we're left with only 80 percent certaintythat Allen was the murderer.

Not that we should want more after 22years. Zodiac is one of the few films I'veever seen that is, finally, at peace withuncertainty. Fincher the fact-based realisthas made a movie that ends, without anypretense or sentimentality, within therealm of probability, stubbornly if notvaliantly refusing to soar off one more timeinto the infectious dream and immediatesatisfaction of 100 percent metaphysicalcertainty. Of course, that lingering 20 per-cent is one of the elements that makesZodiac such a haunting experience. Yet forall of its destruction, sadness, and failure,its ruined lives and depleted energies.Zodiac offers something rare: a just por-trait of communal human effort across abelievable expanse of time. It's one of themost hopeful films I've seen in years, andone of the most satisfying. C

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providing the film with what appears tobe its only certainty. The images seemsuspended in time, self-reflexive, andwith an overwhelmingly beautiful plas-ticity. They recall by turns the aestheticand narrative origins of the Lumieresand Griffith and the avant-garde princi-ples of Warhol, ultimately tied togetherin a fable referencing Filipino mythol-ogy.—Manuel Ydnez Murilto

A SHORT FILM FOR LAOS (23)ALLAN SEKULA. U.S.A DELICATE 40-MINUTE TAPESTRY OFimpressions and observations from atrip to Laos: the Plain of Jars; theancient capital during a festival; aknife forge; a small brick factory;pebble sifting. Gall it an essay on whatthe world's made of, i.e., iron andwater and fire and earth. Wryly ironic,compassionate, and unprepossessinglysimple.—Olaf Moller

THE SILENCE BEFORE BACH de)'-•iKi i-'(,'RTABELLA. SPAINTHE RETURN OF PORTABELLA, AFTER A17-year hiatus, was one of the year'smajor film events. The Catalan masterhasn't lost his cutting-edge instincts or hiscommand of the enigmatic meter thatunderlies his work. His depiction ofmusical performance is materialist to thepoint of abstraction, his writing like cal-ligraphy, his treatment of space architec-tonic, and his narrative free-floating.Transcending its subject, Johann Sebast-ian Bach, this film positions itself as anessayistic meditation on art as a destruc-tive vehicle of social prejudice and anincarnation of the contradictions of Euro-pean history.—Manuel Ydnez Murillo

THE TRAP ADAM CURTIS. U.K.NO LESS AMBITIOUS AND HOTLY TOPICAL

than his seminal The Power of Night-mares (05), the latest from British TV'sforemost essayist is a three-part BBGseries subtitled "What Happened toour Dream of Freedom?" Rangingacross politics, philosophy, and eco-nomic theory, his thesis is that "free-dom" today is conceived according tothe narrow limitations of market calcu-lations and an ideological perspectivethat views human beings as intrinsi-cally selfish and isolated.—Chris Darke

UNITED RED ARMYKOJI WAKAMATSU. JAPANA THREE-HOUR PORTRAIT OF AN ALL-OUT class-war-driven faction ofJapan's ultra-left: the United RedArmy's emergence from the politicalstruggles of the Sixties, its innumerablepolitical causes, and its long, terribledisintegration in the winter of 1971-2when 14 members died during brutalterrorist actions, climaxing in a 10-daystandoff with the police. Both under-standing and critical, this radicallydetailed, unflinching docudrama epicalso has a poetic aspect. A monu-ment.—Olaf Moller

THE UNPOLISHED (24)PIA MARAIS, GERMANYTN HER SLOW-BURNING AND MOVINGchamber piece, Marais stays close to her14-year-old heroine, whose longing forthe straight life puts her at odds with heraddict mother and ex-con father. Theterrific cast and fine ensemble actingsupply vital emotional authenticity. TheUnpolished also features one of the hall-marks of the German New Wave: anability to make the featureless nowheresof suburbia glow with heightenedatmospheric intensity. Marais is a talentto watch.—Chris Darke

BEST FILMS OF 2007 READERS'POLLYou've heard our take on this year's crop of films. Now it's your turn to give us your top picks andyour takes on the movies of 2007. We'll print the results in our March/April issue and publish yourcomments on our website. To enter: Send your list of the year's 20 best films along with your name,address, and phone number, to fcpoll@filmlinc.com, by mail to Film Comment Readers' Poll, 70 Lin-coln Center Plaza. New York NY 10023, or by fax to 212*875-5636. And feel free to send in any rants,raves, or insights on the movies of 2007. Deadline: FEBRUARY 18, 2008. Prizes: First Prize: yourchoice of Criterion Collection DVOs, up to S200 in value. Second Prize: up to S120. Third & Fourthprizes: up to S80.The winners, who will be picked by random draw, can select prizes, subject to avail-abiliry, from the Criterion Collection catalogue (www.criterionco.com).

January-February2008 I FILM COMMENT i 47