With “Seven” David Fincher delivered a milestone of thriller cinema. But if FILMSTARTS editor Pascal Reis has his way, “Zodiac – The Trail of the Killer”, which is on TV today, is the celebrated director’s true masterpiece.
No question, David Fincher has directed many great films with “Fight Club”, “Gone Girl”, “Mank”, “The Social Network” or “The Game”. If you believe the general public, however, “Seven” with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman is his best work. The dark thriller became a modern classic precisely because of its disturbing ending.
In my opinion, however, David Fincher has delivered his true masterpiece with “Zodiac – The Trail of the Killer”, which airs today, 2 October at 11 pm on RTL 2. Once again it is about the hunt for a serial killer. In this case, however, the whole thing is also based on a true incident, which makes the blood run cold…
THIS IS WHAT “ZODIAC” IS ABOUT ON NETFLIX
Between the years 1968 and 1969, the so-called “Zodiac Killer” murdered five people in the San Francisco area. Two other victims survived his attacks. In countless, mostly coded letters, the serial killer contacted the press as well as the police – and thus taunted his pursuers through and through.
The young cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) works for the San Francisco Chronicle and witnesses how the killer’s coded messages cause quite a stir here. Graysmith develops a real obsession and is determined to catch the mysterious killer. He is assisted by star reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo)…
Zodiac” thus features three Marvel stars who join forces to convict a serial killer. While Robert Downey Jr. saves the world as the egocentric Iron Man, Mark Ruffalo is known for his aggression problems as the incredible Hulk. In Spider-Man: Far From Home, Jake Gyllenhaal stepped into the role of Mysterio and gave the friendly neighbourhood spider a hard time.
EVIL IS EVERYWHERE – MAYBE EVEN INSIDE US
Accusations have been levelled at David Fincher time and again that he enjoys the role of stylist far too much for his films to really be able to reveal any profound content. Fight Club” in particular has often been described as a revolting fantasy of an adolescent obsessively trimmed to cult status. In “Zodiac”, however, David Fincher presents himself as grown-up as never before.
Of course, in “Zodiac” Fincher once again illustrates his virtuoso audiovisuality when he penetrates nocturnal San Francisco with an almost inspecting gaze and probes the West Coast metropolis for its abysses, its fears, its secrets: The lights of the big city do not emanate from people, but from perpetrators.
What is interesting is that “Zodiac” consistently refuses to assign an identity to the perpetrators – or to the titular killer himself. In this way, the film virtually undermines every narrative convention that we know from classic crime stories, in which the guilty party can still be happily convicted at the end.
THE TRAGEDY OF REALITY: THERE ARE NO HEROES
In reality, however, the Zodiac killer was never caught. They had some suspects, but no evidence. David Fincher also sticks to this, placing the viewer alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo, but not granting them any more knowledge than the protagonists. You are in the same boat with the main actors – and that is the great tragedy.
If you look for heroes in “Zodiac”, you will quickly realise that instead you are dealing with drunken scoundrels, over-ambitious boy scouts and cookie-cutter cops who have nothing in common with Dirty Harry. They are all confronted with the realisation that realistic investigative work simply only proceeds according to earthly standards.
Maybe that’s why at some point you inevitably have to admit that there are cases that can’t be solved because they don’t want to be solved. “Zodiac” is thus also a film of disillusionment; a film of crude conjecture that shows that evil can never be shifted from the centre of society. No matter how hard one tries.
