zodiac

David Fincher Directed Seven, which is one of my favourite movies, and certainly one of my favourite crime-thriller movies.

Zodiac was a serial killer who attacked 7 victims, killing 5 of them in the San Francisco area during the late-sixties or early-seventies. He was never caught, but he was also one of those serial killers who taunted the police, sending them letters that included ciphers - coded messages, basically.

If you've ever seen Seven, I think you can see where I'm going with this - it seems like perfect Fincher material, with a series of murders committed by a serial killer who behaved in an 'interesting' way.

And as far as that side of the film went, it's really good.

But there's a weird split-personality to the film that I have to admit I didn't like. It's like the film is trying to create a dichotomy - to break itself into two mutually exclusive parts, but it can't because the parts are inextricably linked. But also, it doesn't make any sense to try to split them up, and yet it seemed to be trying to do that.

The two parts are relatively easy to define. The first part where the Zodiac is active and the police are actively trying to solve it and the press are reporting the story and the public is interested and aware. The second is the part where Robert Graysmith is completely obsessed with trying to find the zodiac killer.

Why these don't work as two separate parts is because Graysmith was working as a cartoonist at one of the newspapers the zodiac was sending his ciphers to while he was doing it. In other words, he was actively involved (albeit on the very periphery) in the press side of the story.

So the split can't work because he's there in both parts. Also, when he's trying to solve the case the zodiac is still out there. He's maybe not actually killing any more, but there's nothing to suggest he's not a threat to Graysmith (and his family).

See, one of the particular problems with the narrative is that it's trying to weave real life into a satisfying narrative. The problem is that life doesn't give you nice narratives.

So where Fincher can show you the actual killings in a way that allows him to tell a satisfying, joined up "story-like" way, other stuff doesn't fit that mould. A good example of this is the cipher. Ideally, from a fictional point of view, all of the ciphers would be decoded, but they can't be, because they haven't been in real life and Fincher wants to stay true to that.

I mean, in a super-ideal world it would actually be Graysmith or someone close to him solving the ciphers. However, instead, the first one isn't solved by him, but a random couple who like doing puzzles.

Which is fine, if things are being portrayed in a documentary-like fashion, but they aren't, it's trying to weave these facts into a satisfying story.

I dunno, it feels more like he'd have been better doing a story inspired by the zodiac, rather than actually doing the zodiac if you see what I mean.

Another problem is that even though the film is 2 and a half hours long, it feels like a lot of it is given short shrift, because there's so much to fill in. The story covers many characters across many years and it just isn't possible to fit all of it in, but Fincher seems to want to try.

I'm giving it more of a mauling than it deserves as it's not actually that bad, it's just I think I was kinda hoping for a lot more than I got.