The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, April 26-May 2
Zodiac (2007)
Directed by David Fincher
Fincher’s snappy blend of gory slasher, true crime procedural, and newsroom bustle landed much like the investigation it depicts: a quasi-psychic melding of minds from different disciplines, endlessly obsessed with deciphering an unmasked murderer. The Zodiac Killer, who haunted—and taunted—the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and 70s, was a teenage fascination of screenwriter James Vanderbilt, who pitched to Fincher, fully expecting a pass. Unbeknownst to him, Fincher, a Bay Area resident at the time of the killings, was fascinated with Zodiac since childhood. A years-long research process ensued, interviewing survivors and key figures in the initial hunt. Thus, Zodiac is richly addictive, all thanks to its crack squads before and behind the camera, sharing an attention to detail that’s fitfully obsessive. That the film itself has gained a cult following of viewers looking to unravel every trick loaded into its nearly three-hour length is even tastier.
Though Zodiac’s sexually motivated bloodlust wasn’t particularly unique (the Mansons hadn’t killed the hippie dream quite yet), it was his manipulative tactics that drove people crazy. He didn’t just slay; he made himself a media sensation, sending code-heavy puzzles to area newspapers, disclosing information only he and the police knew. At self-promotion, he was consistent, even if his crime patterns were not. Helping conflate murder with celebrity, folks lined up to offer contradictory information, even if it meant claiming that they, themselves, were the Zodiac. At the receiving end of the craze in Zodiac are newspapermen Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., plus detective Mark Ruffalo. They develop an even-handed, often combative, rapport, carrying a low-key chiller on the thrill of wordplay and pushing paperwork. But as with the case, it’s the wham-bam performances that stand out—Ione Skye as a survivor of a botched kidnapping, Brian Cox as flashy lawyer Melvin Belli, and John Carroll Lynch and Charles Fleischer giving their equal share of creeps as suspects. Chloë Sevigny, to which the screening is owed, lends her dry demeanor to a role which could’ve very easily been another of the genre’s “nagging wives.”
As the true story is so visually dependent, the film is, too. From the old studio bumpers at the beginning through the strategically placed CGI and matting techniques to the altering of hairs on Gyllenhaal’s hand, the production team exhaustively replicates the period climate. They also accomplish the difficulties of pure horror in various lights, be it via headlight, a dim basement, or a sunny afternoon. The little extra morsels play off the screenplay’s garnishes, like Ruffalo’s mooching habits or Gyllenhaal’s complicated grasp of distance. Juiciest of all, the film establishes the case’s direct dialogue with cinema, be it in the form of a poster for The Wrong Man (another ace paranoid thriller working on the tension of circumstantial evidence), using Dirty Harry as a false mirror, or David Shire’s classic cues. Maybe that was the Zodiac’s most lasting triumph: envisioning himself as a movie villain akin to Count Zaroff, he became one several times over. Max Kyburz (April 28, 29, midnight at the Nitehawk’s Chloë Sevigny series)