Zodiac and Obsession: An Analysis of Fincher’s Greatest Film
This was originally posted on the 24/03/2020
Quick Disclaimer: I originally wrote this as a University essay so there are quoted parts I’ve moved around and they no longer have their citations but below there will be an entire list of my bibliography!
When I think of notable directors of the past 20 years, one comes to mind repeatedly; David Fincher. And much like other well-regarded filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón, Fincher is regarded as a modern-day auteur, a title that Fincher himself tends to reject as he detests the concept of auteurism. When speaking to Little White Lies Fincher stated, “The problem with auteurism is that it presupposes that one person can impress upon 95 people, so clearly, that the manifestation of whatever it is going on in your head can be clearly attributed to them.” However, even with his dismissal of the theory, it would be hard to say that Fincher is not an auteur due to the fact that even though his films differ heavily in subject matter you can tell that he is the one creating the world you become immersed in and he has the flexibility and technical skill to adapt and adjust to unique demands of each story.
One particular part of Fincher’s filmography is his obsession with obsession, it’s something that has popped up time and time again. This is no surprise when we remember that Fincher is a man that is well known for his obsession with perfection, specifically on his sets. On Zodiac (2007), Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr and Jake Gyllenhaal redid multiple takes around 50- 70 times, while Ruffalo and Downey were much more understanding of the process, Gyllenhaal has said that Fincher was tough to work with as he has more experience with ‘freer’ directors. The same thing occurred on the set of Gone Girl (2014), Rosamund Pike says that she along with other actors were made to retake their takes multiple times. Pike stated that Fincher was not making them do the takes over and over again due to his displeasure with the actors but because he was, “giving you this gift, and allowing you to divest all your baggage.”
While she understood his method Pike did wonder how far was too far, as at one point after being okay with a bruise she received in a scene, it became clear that reshooting fight scenes weren’t safe. Pike has even said that she ended up with an injury due to constant retakes of a scene where she gets into a physical altercation with Ben Affleck’s character. Pike told Variety, “I think probably around 18 of getting my head bashed against the wall, I literally saw stars,” and it was at this point that a member of staff had to intervene.
This constant need for pushing boundaries doesn’t stop at Fincher’s actors, as when one takes a look at his multi decade long filmography it is clear that the theme of obsession pops up repeatedly, and this can be most obviously seen within Zodiac (2007). The two key influences for Zodiac (and further along Mindhunter) were All The President’s Men (1976) and JFK (1991), both these film depict the parts of Zodiac we witness on screen with All The President’s Men centring on journalists who are obsessed with getting to the truth and JFK presenting a version of a historical narrative that is also a hypothesis. Zodiac stands as a testament to Fincher’s dedication and obsession with the truth and while many Hollywood docu-dramas seek to use historical events as a way to legitimize a clearly fictionalized version of an event such as Argo (2012), films such as Zodiac and Memories of Murder (2003) take their place as new realist cinema, a type of cinema that seems to want to restore the historical logic that the ‘facts’ about a specific ‘event’ are taken to be the ‘meaning’ of that event.
Unlike Fincher’s other films Zodiac was much harder to pin his audience down on, as Fincher’s main challenge with Zodiac was that the film itself did not have a strong enough anchor at first to be able to hook the audience as it was grounded in real-life events. Fincher has always dealt with protagonists (Tyler in Fight Club, Ripley in Alien 3, Jodie Foster in Panic Room, Michael Douglas in the Game) that rely on their stories being heavily skewed into their perspective, the story itself coming from how they perceive the events and not the events themselves. Zodiac had to not only do this with Robert Graysmith, but it had to also tell its story directly to the audience in a way that Fincher can effectively communicate his ideas whilst using Robert as a cypher, the way this was done was through the various aspects of cinema.
Cinematography
The opening scene of Zodiac places the audience in the seat of the victims as we open with a tracking shot of Vallejo, California. The camera is stationed as a POV shot and we are shown rows of houses. In the Director’s Commentary of Zodiac, Fincher states: “I just wanted to see some notion of normalcy before we show any of the violence.” The shot in itself is obsessive, we are shown rows of houses that are perfectly alike repeating themselves and then it stops at the victim’s house to then lead towards their attack. There is no way to know exactly if this shot happened in real life prior to the attack but Fincher is attempting to create his artistic take on the event. Fincher had made sure that nearly everything that was shown within the film was time period-accurate, such as the houses, the cars and the outfits worn. By doing this in the opening it grounds everything in a sense of time and place. This not only makes the film accurate but also gives it a visual distinction, to begin with, as the film moves on and the audience becomes more aware of the Zodiac and his inability to get caught we can see the world definitively begin to change.
The feeling of a puzzle with moving parts is how the cinematography works in Zodiac, the omniscience of the camerawork is quintessentially Fincher. The story isn’t told from any one perspective, it feels laser-focused on only the important parts and important people, almost in a godlike sense, demonstrated best by the scene where an unknown man hails down a cab, this then transitions into an overhead shot sequence where the camera brings us along for the ride. In the Director’s Commentary Fincher states, “[It is] God’s POV looking down on something he has no control over.” By the end of the ride, we cut back to a close-up shot of the inside of the cab. It is here that it becomes clear, the passenger was, in fact, Zodiac and he proceeds to murder a cab driver, Fincher is once again placing the audience in the front seat of the attack as a way to bring about a sense of realism. However, there are times the film breaks its realist cinematography such as when Melvin Belli is set to meet the Zodiac after he calls to get help. Belli steps outside of his car expecting to see the Zodiac and instead sees a large array of helicopters, cop cars and more attention-grabbing attractions. This would be over the top in real life and would not be used to apprehend an uncatchable serial killer but in the film, it is used as a comedic effect.
The Zodiac attacks are also all shot differently and they tend to change in tone, there is a scene wherein the Zodiac Killer picks up a stranded woman and her child as their car has just broken down from his meddling. On their way to a gas station, he tells the mother that he will kill her and her child. Much like the Lake Berryessa scene, this was shot much more personal than the other killings, Fincher included various shots of the Zodiac making contact with his victims, and used extreme close-ups to depict the victims getting stabbed as well as a normal close up of the mother’s response to being told that he was going to kill her. This differs from how the couple in the car are shot as well as the cab scene, they focus more on the gore and violence, placing the viewer directly in the seat of the victims, this may have been to reflect the different effects the Zodiac killings had on the public.
Colour
Colour is also an important aspect within this film, most of the murders are shot in dark lighting as they occur at night but in the Lake Berryessa scene this changes. Here two lovers are lying about in a sunny California park, the bright yellow of the land splashing against the blue of the lake draws viewers in to expect a calm and cheerful day. Yet, when the black of the Zodiac’s outfit appears, it clashes with the pre-established palette, making his presence ever more ominous and amps up the danger felt. Fincher often uses isolated colours within his palette in order to bring about an unanticipated moment within a scene.
Fincher also uses complementary colours such as blue and yellow in nearly all of his films but it is most prominently seen within Zodiac. The opposing colours represent both the inner and outer conflict of the characters and the narrative. When Graysmith visits Avery and he’s wearing a blue jacket (as he does throughout the film), whilst Avery’s dressing gown consists of blue and yellow stripes. This can be read as Avery’s outward conflict of not wanting to play into Greysmith’s growing obsession whilst also internally having been obsessed with the case in the past. This can also be witnessed in the offices of the newspaper where yellow is a commonly used colour within its palette but it begins to fade as the film progresses through time, this is the influence of the Zodiac vanishing.
Music
Unlike Fincher’s other films Zodiac doesn’t have a score that is used prominently during the film, and instead, it relies on pop music and sound design for key moments and montages. This is most obvious within the opening sequence of the film that was originally set to Big Brother and the Holding Company’s “All Is Loneliness,” but when Fincher’s music supervisor brought him more options including the Three Dog Night’s Easy to Be Hard, he changed it. Hearing the song “transported” Fincher back into his memory of being a young boy driving through the Vallejo area where some of the killings occurred, this helps to immerse the audience in the reality of the film even if some dramatic licence has been taken.
Another song used right at the moment of the first attack is Donovan’s 1968 hit, Hurdy Gurdy Man, a song about a mysterious man who invokes the passage of time and associates it with the despair of humanity. The song first appears during the introduction of the Zodiac (4:45) and his first on-screen attack in Vallejo. The song is reused at the end of the film (2:38:23) when the sole survivor of Vallejo identifies a potential suspect, it is used as a sense of closure. Closure for the victim who had his life robbed from Zodiac and closure for the audience, while they may never know who exactly was behind the mantle, they are able to piece together a theory through the film.
The rest of the film gets by with no use of music whatsoever, and for scenes such as the lakeside murder, this makes it feel as real and true to life as they could possibly make it, which is the thesis statement for the whole movie. Even when Greysmith panics in the suspects’ basement there’s no eerie music, it is all sound design to enhance the moment. Fincher uses music for a sense of progression and thematic reinforcement, whereas he lets the moments that were recreated from the book or the testimony allow the real people to speak for themselves.
Editing
Zodiac is a film full of montages, well three to be precise and each of these montages suits a formal time progression function as well as a thematic difference. The first is the text montage, here there are varying texts from news clippings about Zodiac, close up shots of the code Zodiac sent in and his letters. These are overlaid on scenes of the detective’s repeated trips to the San Francisco Chronicle where many of the key moments of the film take place. It’s used to push time forward but also to emphasise how obsessed Zodiac is with being noticed, his constant ploys for attention bring the characters back together time and time again as well as his effect on the public.
The second is a time-lapse creation of San Francisco’s TransAmerica building, this can read as San Francisco flourishing and changing with the times while Zodiac is still attempting to drag characters back into his same old antics, and we see the toll he is taking on them. Finally, there is a 4-year time jump moving the film forward from the early 70s to the late 70s. Fincher achieves this time-lapse by inserting in an audio montage of historic events of the 70s, this along with varying songs creates a cultural reference for audiences to recognize, bringing the film more into reality. The music montage set to a black screen was a way to express a passage of time using “a real mass culture reference.” It’s meant to identify that the movie isn’t over and “that this in some ways the midpoint, which I’m sure elicited groans from test audiences,” says Fincher during the Commentary Cut. This final time jump shows us how all of this finally connects, it is a way in which Fincher is able to tell the audience the overall macro story through a microtechnique and this is done through the utilization of formalism. Other editing aspects of Zodiac are somewhat seamless when the key moments weren’t being shown, Fincher seemed focused on concealing edits and transitions, it is smooth and plays out like an endless puzzle that had an entire country at its will.
Acting
The performances of Zodiac are cyclical, Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr) is first presented as a hungry and enthusiastic journalist who becomes obsessed with the Zodiac and gradually deteriorates as the case goes on. Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) starts the film as an awkward bystander in the newsroom, he is somewhat indifferent to the case but then ends up inheriting Avery’s Zodiac obsession in the second half of the film, and becomes so desperate to solve it that he places his own obsession onto Toschi to solve the case. There are moments in the film where the obsession visibly takes over Greysmith as a character, he thinks he has finally figured out who he believes the Zodiac is, and as the scene follows this progression, a crescendo of energy as the amounts of evidence builds and builds, and Graysmith gets more and more chaotic and wide-eyed. Further along in the film, there is a basement sequence, where Greysmith visits an acquaintance of the Zodiac but his paranoia becomes so overwhelming that even in a situation that, we come to learn, was totally unfounded, the tone of that scene is scary purely because of Gyllenhaal’s believable paranoia.
While the film does not directly point out who the killer is, the way in which it makes its stance somewhat clear is when Arthur Allen Leigh (John Carroll Lynch) is interviewed by the SFPD. It is almost as if the film slows down at that moment to emphasize Allen’s involvement. The performances within that scene tend to be a lot less reigned in, more chaotic and less measured than everyone else, Allen never intended to give the police any answers, but also chooses to confuse them deeply as to why he was being helpful then defensive and then cross at them. He intentionally never answers anything and stops speaking before a question about his real involvement can be fit in. Fincher did not want a performance that impersonates the real Allen. Fincher asked him to try the interrogation scene “as a guy who’s innocent… and halfway through the conversation, you realize that it looks pretty bad. And he did it. He looked way more guilty taking that approach then when he was playing a guy who was trying to hide the truth.” He says it speaks to behaviour and the perception of behaviour, and it’s a benefit of casting great actors. As the investigation of the Zodiac begins to fall apart shortly after Allen’s acquittal, the film starts to fall apart and drops in its pacing.
Mindhunter & Serial Killers
Fincher has an obvious love for the psychology behind serial killers and Zodiac was his first venture into this genre of true crime that has led him to his hit show Mindhunter (2018-) where he has honed in on his craft. He has taken what worked from the Zodiac, including its open-ended nature and real lack of a true story structure, and applies it to Mindhunter. Fincher tends to pace out the episodes in a molasses-like way but in his own grotesque unnerving manner. The show is slower and more patient than Zodiac and in comparison, it features very little on-screen violence. Instead, he opts for the violence to be shown within the language the characters use, no murders are ever shown but the description of the events allow the audience to shape their own imaginings of the types of murder as opposed to Fincher recreating his variation of the multiple Zodiac murders such as the Lake Berryessa attack and the Lovers Lane attack.
Fincher’s interest in this subject matter seems to stem from the idealistic era of the 70’s that many famous serial killer cases began in, those times were simple and that is what he thrives on in both Mindhunter and Zodiac: the simplicity of society. Fincher does revel in the shocking nature of the murders that are discussed in Mindhunter, but demonstrated in Zodiac, he tends to contrast the murders with the tame setting that both show and film are in. It is no coincidence that Mindhunter and Zodiac are set within the same decade as the zeitgeist was running rampant with ideas of who these killers were, and began essentially glamorizing them while trying to bring awareness to their crimes. This glamorization is taken full force in the character of Holden, Fincher uses Holden as a representation of all the people enamoured with the idea of serial killers and their infamy. He uses glamorization and turns it against us displaying the despair caused towards people like Paul Avery, Robert Graysmith, Holden Ford and Bill Tench.
While people may be obsessed with the idea of Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and The Zodiac, Fincher takes it upon himself to show us the misery involved in obsessing about these types of people and their actions, but the irony in that is that he is also partially obsessed with these killers. By taking society’s simple fascination with violence and sex and turning it on its head in both Mindhunter and Zodiac, Fincher was able to uncover a deeper look into the mindset of the decade and a country in peril. Through his obsessive attention to detail Fincher has created a docu-drama that pays homage to the victims of the killings and a perfect neo-noir film of the 21st century that gives audiences the same sense of claustrophobia that the Zodiac Killer gave those involved in the case.
Bibliography:
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Zodiac (Director’s Commentary). (2008). [DVD] Directed by D. Fincher. Hollywood: Warner Brothers.
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Hallam, J. and Marshment, M. (2000). Realism and Popular Cinema. 1st ed. Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press.
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