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In Old Blood
By bukkhead | August 12, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘ZODIAC’
Written by James Vanderbilt, based on the books by Robert Graysmith
Directed by David Fincher
Rated R
158 mins.
Zodiac is a long movie. Movies are getting longer, for some reason, trending the way portions sizes have been growing in restaurants. I don’t know if it costs more to make a longer movie—I’m thinking it doesn’t. So when they track the rising cost of movies and food, they should correct for size.
Does this make Zodiac an epic? Maybe. It tracks from the late sixties through the early nineties, though much of the film takes place during Zodiac’s activities in the early seventies. For those who don’t know: a series of grisly murders occurred in California, accompanied by cryptic letters sent to the San Francisco Examiner (and a few other newspapers). The killer called himseld “The Zodiac,” and was never apprehended.
This movie follows, for the most part, Chronicle political cartoonist Robert Graysmith, who would later go on to write the books on which this movie is based. Included are Paul Avery, the reporter who tracked the Zodiac story during its heydey, and David Toschi, the detective assigned to the case when killings began in San Francisco.
Due credit goes to Robert Downey Jr, as Avery, who gives Jake Gyllenhaal plenty of room as Graysmith to frame the story. In many ways, Zodiac is the American version of Jack the Ripper, not so much for the nature of the crimes, but for all the theories and conspiracies associated with the killer’s still unknown identity. Gyllenhaal as Graysmith gives the story the focus and perspective it needs to keep from spiralling out of control along all of those potential theories.
As well, the movie picks up bits and pieces of the late sixties and early seventies without being another one of these long love affairs with an era. So what do you get in 158 minutes if not an ammalgamation of conspiracies and long drawn out period shots? You get that rarely achieved mixture of story and history, without the one taking away from (or uneccesarrily adding to) the other.
The first portion of the movie is a balance between the Zodiac’s murders and the life of the men investigating. The second half is Graysmith’s story, and the impact of reviving the investigation, to tie up as many loose ends as possible. And since the film plays true to actual events, and the Zodiac is never fully discovered (not officially), what you’re left with is the process that played out, which is all the matters anyway.
Afterall, when a man kills randomly, we quickly shift from the what to the why, and since insane killers are usually inscrutable, we can only hope to learn the why from those who want to catch him. Which can be an epic story, if it changes one man’s life. In the end, as more than one character points out, the Zodiac only killed a few people. It’s the decision to finish the story, based on one’s own dedication, and not at the behest of a letter writing madman, that makes the story epic.
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