Some murders just won’t lie down and die. The man who called himself Zodiac is officially linked to five killings, though in letters to the press he claimed as many as 37. For several years from 1969 he terrorized the San Francisco area, taunting the authorities with frequent cryptic messages that received front-page treatment. Despite this weakness for self-publicity, and despite failing to finish off two of his victims, who were able to describe their ordeal in some detail, the Zodiac continued to elude the police, and eventually the trail went cold.
Fincher lays out every facet of the case in methodical detail, beginning with the second (or is it the third?) crime scene, July 4, 1969, and then rifling through the weeks, months and years — all of it scrupulously fact-checked. His work here speaks of the utmost concentration, patience and restraint. It is easily his most mature and coherent picture.
Shot in High Definition by DP Harris Savides (Elephant), Zodiac is both matter-of-fact and strangely elusive. For all that much of it takes place under fluorescent office lights, cutting between parallel investigations led by Inspectors Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) and crime beat reporter Paul Avery (an engagingly dissolute Robert Downey Jr), the prevailing mood is an altogether hazier, amber nocturne, the darkness on the edge of town — and the edge of reason too.
Zodiac is a fascinating procedural precisely because Fincher leaves room for doubt. He’s at least as interested in how not knowing drives and cripples these men as he is in establishing definitive guilt. In this, the film’s closest cousin is Bong Joon-ho’s brilliant Memories of Murder. The mystery is the point.
Jul 27: Intro by Kurtis Smejkal, film critic, Three Angry Nerds
More than any American movie of the past decade, Zodiac accepts and embraces irresolvability, which may be why it’s so hypnotically rewatchable.
Adam Nayman, The Ringer
A long work of completely sustained suspense and dark humor.
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe
David Fincher
Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr, Mark Ruffalo
USA
2007
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Screenwriter
James Vanderbilt
Cinematography
Harris Savides
Editor
Angus Wall
Original Music
David Shire
Production Design
Donald Graham Burt
Art Director
Keith P. Cunningham
Also in This Series
These movies speak to our times and push the boundaries of the art form — the true modern classics we’re confident will withstand the test of time.
In the Mood for Love
Wong Kar-wai's most acclaimed and popular film is a love story about two neighbours (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung) who are drawn together by the long absences of their respective spouses + a newly released short companion piece from 2001.
Paprika
A device capable of transmitting dreams falls into the wrong hands in this dazzling anime meta-movie from visionary filmmaker Satoshi Kon. The imagery here is never less than overwhelming; it's probably the greatest scifi movie of our times.
Certain Women
Spare, incisive portraits of four Montana women (Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone) brushing up against the everyday wears and tears of difficult men, their own circumstances, and the desire for something better.
Melancholia
Lars von Trier squares up to the end times with this grandly luxuriant but surprisingly punky sci-fi, set in an imposing country mansion house, where Justine (Kirsten Dunst) blows up what's supposed to be the happiest day of her life.
Moonlight
Moonlight is many things -- a portrait of a young black man coming of age in Miami in the 1980s, a film about fathers and sons, about mentorship and about the scourge of drugs -- but it is also one of the most piercing movie romances of the last decade.
Lady Bird
Greta Gerwig's first film as writer-director is a delightful, painful comedy about "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), a Sacramento teen on the point of swapping high school for college, and her hard-working mom, Marion (Laurie Metcalf).
Silence
This sober, probing examination of faith, ego, cruelty and compassion is the most underrated film from the often under-valued latter half of Martin Scorsese's brilliant career; a passion project, about Catholic missionaries in 17th Century Japan.
Synecdoche, New York
Charlie Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- all great, all successful -- then turned director with Synecdoche, which is a masterpiece and which basically went unseen. It's overdue rediscovery.