|Allison Vincent|
Zodiac plays at the Trylon Cinema as part of BLEAK WEEK on Monday, June 1, and Saturday, June 6. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
I love both David Fincher movies and movies about tracking and apprehending serial killers. I also love a good true crime doc. My Netflix “Recently Watched” is filled to the brim with multi-episode rundowns of both the most well-known offenders as well as the bizarre, regional “you’re never going to believe this” story that feels like catching lightning in a bottle. 2007’s Zodiac does an incredible job of catching the viewer by the nose and pulling us along on a quest rooted in obsession. Fincher’s dark, almost tunnel-visioned focus in the film creates a constant tension throughout the film and really does make it feel like we, the audience via Graysmith, are going to get him, by God.
To make the film, Fincher and producer Brad Fischer spent 18 months conducting their own investigation. In typical Fincher fashion, the film is saturated in the colors of its era. The tint has the yellow look of photos from the late 60s and 70s, and the brash, raucous soundtrack sometimes clashes with the events on screen in a disconcerting, but highly effective juxtaposition of culture, theme, and action. Fincher does an amazing job making the 70s a character in the film. The caller on the radio show boasting that he’s not scared of the Zodiac because he’s only killing “hippies,” the poster for Hair about a bunch of free love hippies in 60s New York, and downtown San Francisco’s development skyward with new construction. In classic Fincher fashion, the banal everyday routines and rituals the characters endure that reveal the reality of the time. Smoking, flying, dropping in cafes, rotary phone conversations, and hand sorting through filing systems all are constant reminds of how impossible the case became because of the analog age that Zodiac committed his crimes in.
Known for his meticulous attention to historical detail (PLEASE MAKE ANOTHER SEASON OF MINDHUNTER, MY GUY), Fincher puts the viewer in the world of these characters in an extremely real, grimy, grounded way. In this way, Fincher is kind of obsessed with the details of the time and the crime, taking 157 minutes to show the monotony of following jurisdictional protocols, nosing through boxes of files, and exhausting all leads. But the movie is far from boring. On the contrary, it is completely engrossing.
Zodiac is a movie about obsession. All of our main characters, to certain extents, are obsessed with the case. The Zodiac himself is obsessed with both his own fame and murder. His motives seem to be the classic, narcissistic, megalomaniacal desire to incite fear and admiration for him and his crimes across California. Paul Avery, brilliantly played by the scene-stealing Robert Downey Jr., is a rockstar newspaper reporter who conveys a “too cool for school” persona that begins to crack while investigating the case. Once Avery is named in a Zodiac letter, his semi-precarious grip on his alcohol and drug habits fully slips into addiction, numbing him out from the reality of the world around him. Mark Ruffalo’s soft-spoken Det. Toschi has a thing for animal crackers and becomes obsessed with a moment in time when he missed capturing the Zodiac at the corner of Washington and Cherry. Because of the discovery that he was forging fan letters praising his police work to Chronicle reporter Armistad Maupin, Toschi loses the Zodiac case and is sent to robbery detail.
The clearest example of destructive obsession in the movie (besides the Zodiac himself) is our main protagonist, Robert Graysmith, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Graysmith is portrayed as a kind of nerdy, awkward guy absorbed by his work and generally unaware of his surroundings. He lets his son swallow toothpaste because he’s distracted by running late. Waiting in traffic, he doodles a cartoon idea behind the wheel until the car behind him honks him back to reality. He’s generally not respected at The Chronicle and written off as “the cartoon guy”—a completely separate entity from the rest of the paper’s bullpen.
When the Zodiac’s cipher rolls across Graysmith’s desk, he immediately copies it down to work on later; he then draws a dark, hooded cartoon of the Zodiac, and the viewer knows this man has caught the bug bad. Graysmith’s immediate interest in the Zodiac murders is so strong that Paul Avery questions whether Graysmith might not be the Zodiac himself. I believe it is the puzzle of the cipher that grabs Graysmith’s attention and simply will not let go. Every detail beyond that is just another finger wrapping itself around a mind that cannot rest until the puzzle pieces all fit as they are meant to; until the jumbled picture is clearly revealed.
Graysmith is the odd man out, because his obsession really doesn’t have anything to do with his career or identity. He is a cartoonist, a father, and a reader. His descent into obsession takes the route of a hobby, and that is why he is so alluring to me as a viewer. I, too, have those little obsessions—topics I can’t help but gnaw at and do my own “research” on. Of course, nothing to the extent of Graysmith. But I think that’s the point. He is a cautionary tale. His obsession with the case ultimately costs him his marriage and children, but he can’t give up the game.
The fact that despite all this sacrifice, the case remains unsolved, is what makes the movie “bleak” to me. How torturous? How cruel? Of course, the murders of all those innocent people are horrendous crimes, their families left to grieve their loss, but the fact that the killer got away with it? That is what keeps people up at night: the absence of justice. Not knowing if the killer is alive or dead or if he could strike again. It is maddening. We don’t get our man. It is a thoroughly unsatisfying end to a great story rooted in truth. It is devastating that the Zodiac was never caught. But that is true. Justice is not always served. Good does not always prevail, and the fact that we work really hard to solve something doesn’t always mean we’ll arrive at a conclusion.
In my own mini-obsession with true crime, no story has left me more distraught (outside of the actual crimes) than that of Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. That story has a lot of similarities with Zodiac. McNamara became obsessed with trying to piece together and solve the Golden State Killer case—another 70s/80s unsolved serial killer mystery. Like Graysmith, she set out to capture her findings in a book, was frustrated with the fragmentation of jurisdiction that caused evidence to slip through the cracks of the past, and was certain that if she just got everything together in one place, she could bring about justice for the victims and their families. Also like Graysmith, she became consumed by the case. McNamara passed away, unexpectedly, after finishing her manuscript. Like Paul Avery, the weight of the case had caused her to turn to substances to help quiet her brain. She never got to see the book’s publication or the massive impact it had on helping to solve that decades-old cold case with the help of DNA testing and online ancestry records.
Obsession can be a tremendous tool for artists, investigators, or anyone with a passion really. It can offer insight to pick up on patterns and nuances others miss, and the drive to take a project across the finish line. It can also be an albatross around the neck dragging the wearer deeper and deeper into a cycle of self-destruction in place of discovery. Luckily, for Robert Graysmith, he is able to accept the dead end that his case ultimately leads to, but others like Avery and McNamara are not so lucky.
Bleak, man.
Edited by Finn Odum