ZODIAC (Dir. by David Fincher, Paramount Pictures, 2007)

Robert Graysmith: I knew it! “Man is the most dangerous animal of all.” I knew that I heard that from somewhere before. “The Most Dangerous Game.”
Paul Avery: The most what?
Robert Graysmith: It’s a movie about a count who hunts people for sport. People. “The Most Dangerous Game.”
Paul Avery: Who’s that?
Robert Graysmith: That’s Count Zaroff.
Paul Avery: Zaroff? With a Z?

The decade brought about many great pictures but none were more accurate, exciting, and thrilling as David Fincher’s “Zodiac.” There is not a single detail missing here – the Chronicle, Graysmith, Toschi, Belli, Mulanax, the suspects, the victims, the late-night calls, the letters, the fashion, the music, it’s all in there. Fincher, meticulous as ever, recreated several sets, the most notable being the San Francisco Chronicle of the 1970s. When Robert Graysmith, the man who began his tenure at the Chronicle as a cartoonist only to become one of the most involved pursuers of the mysterious Zodiac killer, visited the set, he was startled by its familiarity: “There is such an attention to detail and my favorite is the recreation of the San Francisco Chronicle. I went to the set, it’s a block long, you open the drawer and there are Chronicle pencils and notepads, the phone works, you look up at the ceiling and the old antiquated lighting system, nobody’s going to look up there. I had never seen anything like it” (Graysmith, ropeofsilicon.com). Graysmith spent several years obsessing over the case of San Francisco’s Bay Area killer – an obsession that would cost Graysmith his marriage and, nearly, his own sanity.

Fincher, aside from presenting the case, also brings vital clues back into the light. The case of Zodiac remains puzzling not just to Graysmith and Dave Toschi, the then lead San Francisco Police Department investigator assigned to the case, but to most who have become obsessed with the case over the years. There are many stories about the reasons why Zodiac was never caught or identified. Some argue that evidence was mishandled while others insist there was a lack of evidence. Some believe the case may have involved two people – Zodiac and an accomplice. Whatever the case, it has remained unsolved. But the journalists and the investigators are certainly not the ones to blame. One can only sit back in admiration for their hard work. Here were journalists and investigators who often put themselves in harm’s way to uncover the truth. Here are men who spent sleepless nights in bureaus sifting through witness testimonies, crime scene details, and  long lists of suspects. The film has been compared, rightfully, to Alan J. Pakula’s political masterpiece “All the President’s Men.” It’s not difficult to spot the similarities between both pictures. Both are about the process of solving a case – not just about the case itself. They hit the right notes every step of the way and in “Zodiac”, much like in “All the President’s Men”, the tension is elevated throughout.

What’s even more admirable about the film is that, though it is based on Graysmith’s Zodiac book, it takes the time to examine once-potential suspects before moving to Graysmith’s ultimate suspect – Arthur Leigh Allen. This is necessary because theoretically Allen wouldn’t become a suspect until a list of approximately 2500 suspects was examined and cleared. It was a process of elimination which ultimately led to Allen who may or may not have been the Zodiac killer though Graysmith is morally convinced that Allen was the killer.

The Zodiac killer remains one of the most puzzling figures in the crime world. Not only did he carry out murders in a specific way but he would taunt the San Francisco Chronicle and the SFPD with handwritten letters that were more often than not threatening (click here to see an actual Zodiac letter that was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle by the Zodiac killer himself) . Zodiac was a killer who saw killing as a game. He would incorporate cryptology into his letters – often making it difficult for police to decipher his messages or puzzles. One of his ciphers, a sheet baring 300 characters/symbols, still remains unsolved until this very day. The CIA, NSA, SFPD, and other cryptology experts have been unable to decipher the message. One researcher believes the message itself involves mathematics and that folding the paper in certain areas completes sentences diagonally and vertically and even contains specific map coordinates. To explain it sounds dizzying enough. Imagine what the cipher itself looks like (click here to see Zodiac’s unsolved cipher). One thing that is certain is that whoever the Zodiac was was quite intelligent as his letters displayed a good understanding of cryptology and mathematical solutions.  He was undoubtedly as methodical as he was diabolical and brutal.

The film doesn’t attempt to close the case but rather reopen it and to heighten the interest in this unsolved case. No one knows what happened to Zodiac. Why did he stop writing? Why did he stop murdering? And, did he ever really stop murdering or did he just stop announcing his murders? The bigger question is perhaps whether or not he (or she) is still living. No one knows for sure but the film is powerful enough to make us question not only the case but beyond the case. I can’t imagine anyone watching this movie and not “Googling” the case afterward. The film is heavy, at times violent, at times thrilling, and the tension is maintained by a dynamic cast. These actors become the characters. As for the recreation of the case, details seem to be floating away from the pages in the archives and onto the screen. The film feels like a carbon copy of the case and the times. No other film in the last decade brought us close to a story the way Zodiac did and no other film had inspired us, viewers, to want to solve such a baffling case the way Zodiac did.