Zodiac

Zodiac (2007) reminds me of All the President's Men (1976). It can be seen almost as a kind of semi-documentary. It dramatizes the Zodiac killings in Southern California in the late 1960s and the subsequent police and journalistic investigations that ensued. Much of the film takes place in a newspaper office. In the first half a reporter and editorial cartoonist become a "team" that investigates the murders. Newspaper headlines mark the progress of the investigation. Dates and locations label the time and place where scenes occur. While All the President's Men moved forward with a kind of inexorable momentum, partially the result of the fact that any audience would have been familiar with the events it chronicles, Zodiac is more casual if not lugubrious.

Zodiac is oddly structured. It moves forward in chronological order. It's devoted mainly to detailing the investigations of the murders, rather than the murders themselves, though it does show several of the killings. It has several protagonists who vary in importance as the film develops. For much of the film the cartoonist is merely an interested observer. In the film's second half, as the newspapers and law enforcement agencies lose interest, he becomes the primary investigator. Several of the investigators suffer for their involvement—a reporter becomes so obsessed that he loses perspective and quits his job; a detective is accused of faking a letter purportedly written by the murderer; the cartoonist stops drawing cartoons and begins writing a book about the murders, and his marriage is ruined as a result (the Zodiac murderer apparently calls the house once a week and breathes heavily into the phone—this doesn't make his wife happy, and her husband's gradually intensifying obsession with the case causes him to neglect her and their children. He is based on the cartoonist Robert Graysmith, whose book about the Zodiac killings is the basis of the film).

The film continually reminds us that we are in the late 60s by using iconic music of the period as a soundtrack. For some reason, this seems a bit contrived and forced.

In All the President's Men there was a clear endpoint to the reporters' investigations: the resignation of Richard Nixon. Zodiac ends with speculation, but not with certainty. Much circumstantial evidence and some physical evidence points to one suspect, but he dies of a heart attack before he can be indicted. Partial DNA evidence (the result of an analysis conducted long after the murders ended) does not support his involvement. When the film ends, all that is clear is that a lot of lives have been damaged if not destroyed.

Much of the interest in the film centers on the personalities of the reporters and detectives involved in the investigations, not to mention the Zodiac murderer himself—whoever he might be. His use of codes, the ways in which he chooses, stalks, and kills his victims, his manner of communicating with the police and newspapers, his occasional phone calls and his love of publicity—not to mention the question of why he does what he does and why he stops—make him a fascinating subject, even though who he is never becomes clear. Even some of the investigators of the murders are occasionally mentioned as possible suspects.

Murky, moody nighttime cinematography proliferates through the film. One is reminded of the X-Files. Some of the scenes are unsettling—in style and especially tone they reminded me of some of the best essays in Joan Didion's Slouching towards Bethlehem (1968). In one such scene the cartoonist goes to visit someone who he believes once might have worked with the murderer—during the scene the cartoonist asks a series of questions, the answers to which make him begin to suspect that the man himself could be the killer. He becomes desperate to escape the house—this is the most frightening scene in the film. Acting by Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Anthony Edwards, is good but low key, consistent with the overall style of the film.

There's no real resolution. The film just comes to an end and with a few messages before the credits start to roll tells us a bit about what happens to the various investigators and to the main suspect.

There's no deep philosophical message here. Some murders simply go unsolved. Not all mysteries can be explained. The Sixties were a disturbing, increasingly mysterious and perplexing time (especially as they grow more distant). The Zodiac killings were a bizarre and dark reflection of the decade that produced them. As an entertainment, a crime drama, a psychological study of the murders and the men investigating them, Zodiac is a satisfying if frustrating experience.

Read a Slate essay on this film: http://www.slate.com/id/2181343.