David Fincher
Zodiac

We often linger over the crime pages of newspapers, especially when they talk about murders, bloodshed, mysteries. "Yellow" books, although traditionally categorized as "paraliterature," are the bestsellers in Italian bookstores and newsstands, sometimes regardless of the authors' qualities, sometimes rewarding the likes of Camilleri and Carofiglio, to name two of the best-known Italian emulators of Simenon.

Among the rightfully most famous television programs of the last twenty years, "Telefono Giallo" by Corrado Augias and "Mistero in Blu" (and later "Blu Notte") by Carlo Lucarelli stand out, both dedicated to the great unsolved crimes of Italian (micro)history, from the Alinovi case to the massacre of Via Caravaggio, passing through the events of the monster of Florence. Bruno Vespa and Enrico Mentana battle not only on the Via Poma case, rewarded by audience ratings that are not recorded when discussing economics and politics, but also and especially on the Cogne events, always in search of the unprecedented, the untold, or the infamous key evidence that would clarify the picture of reality, obscured by too many inconsistencies.

It's not only the mystery itself (the "unsolved" crime) that's attractive, but above all, the pleasure of seeking a mystery where it doesn't exist, always trying to re-discuss the acquired results in investigations, in trials (the "solved" crime), by resorting to that technique, or art, so to speak, that particularly stands out in our latitudes, under the name of "reverse engineering." Therefore, the innocence campaigns that characterize many press or opinion campaigns are not driven by the need to protect the person (rightly or wrongly) investigated or accused of the bloodshed, but by the often unconfessed need to question the existing, to initiate new investigations, the new exciting discovery of an alternative truth, or a double and further level of truth, in a sort of regressio ad infinitum.

From this perspective, investigating, and primarily taking an interest in investigations conducted by professionals, seems almost a compensatory mechanism for the deficiencies of the individual, for his existential discomfort, almost the desire to bring order to a complicated, irrational world where everything escapes, the desire to recompose the multiple into unity: it is, as Kant would say, an eternal task, and almost like Penelope, the amateur investigator, in trying to solve the mystery, always postpones the actual solution, benefiting from the excitement and stimulation derived from being in constant search of the truth.

This long introduction should not seem in vain to the reader of this review precisely because "Zodiac", David Fincher's masterpiece, ultimately talks about these issues, the eternal quest for truth, the relationship that is created between the professional/amateur/spectator investigator and the mystery, and how it disrupts, yet stimulates, our lives.

The plot, based on real events, should be known to most, but it can be briefly summarized as follows: in late 1960s San Francisco, a serial killer, self-named "Zodiac," targets his victims randomly (mainly secluded couples), sparking local police investigations and press speculations, as well as the private investigations of a cartoonist/enigma solver, attracted by the encrypted messages that the killer sends to newspapers and police. After years of investigations, the truth, although possible, will never be probable with absolute certainty.

"Zodiac" is not the usual film about serial killers (as was the old "Seven" by the same director), but a work that, as already noted by many, investigates more on the impact of the killer's deeds on the lives of professional or amateur investigators, exploring how their lives are altered by the intervention of the mystery in their daily life.
More profoundly, it highlights the essential unknowability of reality, without reaching a fictitious final recomposition as happens in classic detective stories or much genre cinema (although an implicit attempt is made in this film as well - but I won't reveal too much).

The Truth is unknowable, in fact, both by those who seek it through an inductive, empirical approach, based on the evidence of facts of Galilean descent (the police), on intuition (the journalist), on pure logic and the objective connection of phenomena (the cartoonist/enigma solver), and the light of truth gives way to the darkness of mystery and the untold, as symbolized by the beautiful poster of Zodiac: the light illuminates only the crime scene, the author remains in the shadow.

The professional investigator is the first to yield, to become disillusioned, in the face of the complexity of investigations and the difficulty in finding suitable evidence to build a sufficient accusation (unlike Callahan who resolves everything with a bullet for the Skorpio that inspires Zodiac); the journalist is the second to yield, precisely because he too, as a professional, although not constrained by respecting police investigation procedures, becomes the object of continuous stimuli, no longer able to discern real from imaginary, actual evidence from mere speculation. The cartoonist remains in the field, certainly more stubborn, and indeed because he is less directly involved in the facts, having indirect knowledge of them, as he is accustomed to treating individual events as objects of intellectual amusement, but he too falls victim to the web of his own speculations, and lacks the means to prove what he has probably intuited.

From a purely technical standpoint, Zodiac is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting thrillers of the last decade: excellent choice of the leading trio of actors, with Mark Ruffalo extremely credible in his role, not to mention the good performances of Robert Downey Jr and Jake Gyllenhaal, as well as all the supporting actors involved in the film; evocative choice of locations, in an outskirt San Francisco; realistic outdoor photography, and interesting choice to use filters that give a nearly vintage patina to the interior scenes, almost transforming the film into a documentary of events that happened almost forty years ago, with the film worn by time.

Despite suffering from some slowness in the central part, due to the extreme fidelity of the reconstruction of the investigations, the film stimulates the viewer and does not present genuine drops in tension: particularly chilling the scenes of the killer's attacks, shot almost exclusively from the victims' perspective and without unnecessary bloodshed (the opposite of what happens in Argento's films, in other words). The terror is not imposed by gruesome detail, but by the face of the unfortunate, with a distressing effect not felt for years (since the times of Avati's "La casa...", to be honest), especially in the scene of the murder in broad daylight, in the park, by the lake.

In summary, a film to watch.