Scan and Pan
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Zodiac
After claiming his first three victims, the mysterious Zodiac begins sending letters to the press, including the San Francisco Chronicle where journalist Paul Avery and cartoonist Robert Graysmith work. Avery begins writing about Zodiac, while Graysmith remains on the periphery at first. When Zodiac kills a cabbie in SF, Inspectors Toschi and Armstrong take charge of the investigation, intersecting with the paths of Avery and the increasingly obsessed Graysmith as Zodiac claims more victims and continues to taunt the police.
Director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) once again demonstrates his meticulous craftsmanship as he melds three related but distinct genres -- true crime, police procedural, and crusading investigative journalist -- into a riveting and complex film. Although Fincher's noted as a visual stylist, this film's story never falls into the ocean of style over substance to suffer the cruel fate of drowning in it. He steadfastly focuses on the characters and the details of the investigation, letting them guide the audience along in an unhurried but never slow manner.
The screenplay by James Vanderbilt (Darkness Falls), based on the book by Graysmith, takes a fairly comprehensive look at the investigation over many years. Fincher and Vanderbilt interviewed all of the surviving participants and victims in order to make the film as authentic as possible, and that level of detail seeps into every scene and every performance. Even the routine details of the investigation become interesting. The script also respects the audience enough to allow them to put the pieces together much as the investigators had to do, and nicely avoids a definitive conclusion.
Harris Savides (The Game, Finding Forrester) contributes highly polished cinematography using the Thomson Viper high definition digital video camera, notably making this the first production to be recorded entirely in the camera's uncompressed digital data format. The images are very filmlike, with the exception of a noticeable lack of grain, allowing Fincher and Savides to gain the advantages of digital video without sacrificing the richness of image usually obtained by shooting on film.
Production designer Donald Graham Burt (The Joy Luck Club, Donnie Brasco) ably recreates San Francisco of the late 1960s to late 1970s, aided by seamless CGI. Composer David Shire (All the President's Men, 2010) provides a good score that recalls the music from the films of the story's era. Some critics have said that the film is too long at 158 minutes, but editor Angus Wall (Panic Room) deftly keeps the pace going strong, avoiding crashing on the rocks of boredom.
The film is filled with quirky but realistic people, and the actors bring them to life with a high standard of excellence, including Robert Downey Jr. as the boozing Avery; Jake Gyllenhaal, who's spot on as the overly earnest Graysmith; Mark Ruffalo as the Columboesque Toschi, Anthony Edwards as Armstrong, and Dermot Mulroney as their captain; Brian Cox as attorney Melvin Belli in a brief but brilliant performance; John Carroll Lynch as the prime suspect and Charles Fleischer as his former friend; Elias Koteas and Donal Logue as investigators from other police agencies; and Chloe Sevigny as Graysmith's wife. There are so many other good actors in small roles that I can't name them all.
Zodiac is as close as you'll get to experiencing an investigation of this magnitude without actually being a journalist or a detective, and it's also a damned fine piece of dramatic filmmaking. Highly recommended.
The true story behind the investigation of the infamous Zodiac killings comes to the screen as one of the best films of 2007 so far.
After claiming his first three victims, the mysterious Zodiac begins sending letters to the press, including the San Francisco Chronicle where journalist Paul Avery and cartoonist Robert Graysmith work. Avery begins writing about Zodiac, while Graysmith remains on the periphery at first. When Zodiac kills a cabbie in SF, Inspectors Toschi and Armstrong take charge of the investigation, intersecting with the paths of Avery and the increasingly obsessed Graysmith as Zodiac claims more victims and continues to taunt the police.
Director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) once again demonstrates his meticulous craftsmanship as he melds three related but distinct genres -- true crime, police procedural, and crusading investigative journalist -- into a riveting and complex film. Although Fincher's noted as a visual stylist, this film's story never falls into the ocean of style over substance to suffer the cruel fate of drowning in it. He steadfastly focuses on the characters and the details of the investigation, letting them guide the audience along in an unhurried but never slow manner.
The screenplay by James Vanderbilt (Darkness Falls), based on the book by Graysmith, takes a fairly comprehensive look at the investigation over many years. Fincher and Vanderbilt interviewed all of the surviving participants and victims in order to make the film as authentic as possible, and that level of detail seeps into every scene and every performance. Even the routine details of the investigation become interesting. The script also respects the audience enough to allow them to put the pieces together much as the investigators had to do, and nicely avoids a definitive conclusion.
Harris Savides (The Game, Finding Forrester) contributes highly polished cinematography using the Thomson Viper high definition digital video camera, notably making this the first production to be recorded entirely in the camera's uncompressed digital data format. The images are very filmlike, with the exception of a noticeable lack of grain, allowing Fincher and Savides to gain the advantages of digital video without sacrificing the richness of image usually obtained by shooting on film.
Production designer Donald Graham Burt (The Joy Luck Club, Donnie Brasco) ably recreates San Francisco of the late 1960s to late 1970s, aided by seamless CGI. Composer David Shire (All the President's Men, 2010) provides a good score that recalls the music from the films of the story's era. Some critics have said that the film is too long at 158 minutes, but editor Angus Wall (Panic Room) deftly keeps the pace going strong, avoiding crashing on the rocks of boredom.
The film is filled with quirky but realistic people, and the actors bring them to life with a high standard of excellence, including Robert Downey Jr. as the boozing Avery; Jake Gyllenhaal, who's spot on as the overly earnest Graysmith; Mark Ruffalo as the Columboesque Toschi, Anthony Edwards as Armstrong, and Dermot Mulroney as their captain; Brian Cox as attorney Melvin Belli in a brief but brilliant performance; John Carroll Lynch as the prime suspect and Charles Fleischer as his former friend; Elias Koteas and Donal Logue as investigators from other police agencies; and Chloe Sevigny as Graysmith's wife. There are so many other good actors in small roles that I can't name them all.
Zodiac is as close as you'll get to experiencing an investigation of this magnitude without actually being a journalist or a detective, and it's also a damned fine piece of dramatic filmmaking. Highly recommended.
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