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So Zodiac opened today, and having nothing to do after work last night, I caught the 12:01AM showing. I have to say that I was absolutley amazed. Like many people, I suppose I have a bit of a fascination with the darkest places that human beings can go, but the sheer quality of this film was a surprise.
For those of you that don't know, the film tells the story of the notorious 1970s Bay Area serial killer, using Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) as the viewer's stand-in. Graysmith was an editorial cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle whose enthusiasm for puzzles draws him in to the case (Zodiac sent letters to several bay area papers, several of which included cryptograms that the killer indicated held clues about his identity). His growing obsession with the case--Graysmith went on to write the book that this film is based on--is paralleled by a carefully recreated reproduction of the San Francsico police's investigation.
I should mention that I live in San Francisco, so there was definitely a contextual aspect to my experience of the film that not every viewer will share. Much of the film takes place at the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle, which are two blocks from my house, and less from the cinema where I was watching the film. The period versimilitude was spot on, the locations carefully thought out, and the use of music was precisely evokative of the era whilst avoiding "hey it's the 70s" cliches. The use of CGI to edit the city back to what it looked like then was tasteful and very effective. In one sequence, to show the passage of time during a lacuna between the Zodiac's letters, there is a thrilling animation of the Transamerica Pyramid leaping up from a concrete framework to a glowing office building, fully part of the city's skyline. Another period detail that was very effectively executed was a sequence that illustrated the difficulty of coordinating a multi-juristictional investigation in the days before computers. Rather than just have characters walking around frustrated, muttering "We just can't coordinate this darn thing," there is a bleakly funny crosscutting of a series of telephone calls from Anthony Edwards' SF police detective to the police chiefs of Napa and Vallejo in which he tries to arrange for evidence sharing, hinging on the smaller department's lack of a "thermofax" machine.
The casting was quite well done. Jake Gyllenhaal wonderfully plays Graysmith as a wide-eyed innocent who seems incapable of reaizing the darker aspects of his obsession, or the effects that have on those around him. At the same time the character is just cartoonish enough to allow for complete audience identification. Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards have a sparkling chemistry as the heroic Inspectors David Toschi and Bill Armstrong. Zodiac himself is played by 3 different actors, which prevents the audience from jumping to any conclusions, as well as heightening the sense of mystery. This also supports the netfull of artfully-strewn red herrings that are scattered through the film. Like in any sensationalized narrative, anyone could be the culprit, and there were several times during the film that I mentally declared "It's him!" only to be proven wrong minutes later. The smaller roles were also perfecty calibrated, notably Ciara Hughes as a victim's incarcerated sister, and James Carraway as Shorty, the acerbic Chronicle coffee vendor. And, predicatably enough, Robert Downey Jr. is absolutely radiant as Paul Avery, the drunken, preening crime reporter who pursued Zodiac in the press.
The movie is not a conventional serial killer film. Unlike Fincher's Se7en, the murders are not fetishized. There are some cringe-inducingly brutal scenes, but after the effect of the horror accomplished, the camera has mercy upon the viewer and turns away. This is the first film I've seen in years that actually scared me. Despite the fact that I've read enough of the case that I knew what was going to happen in each murder scene, the inevitability of each of them made it all the more terrifying.
So anyway, go see this film. |
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