Movie: Zodiac

What an interesting movie! It's dark, but that's to be expected from a movie about a serial killer. What surprised me was the humor. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but there are little moments sprinkled throughout that make you go, "Heh." There was one part where a guy has been contacted by the killer and he tells the police the Zodiac kept calling but never left a number, and the policeman responded, 'Yeah, he's kind of crafty like that." What's interesting to me is at first I thought it was kind of strange that there was so much humor, but then I got to thinking how real it is that the humor is there...because that's what we do in situations like those. In order to persevere, we use humor to lighten the mood and make it seem like it isn't as bad as it is.

The whole movie is a great study in realism. It's about a serial killer, but what it is really about is obsession with the serial killer and one man's pursuit of the guy. The direction is fantastic. At first I was a little dismayed by how long the movie is, but the length helps reinforce how much time went by without the Zodiac being captured. That element of time is necessary for us to come to the same conclusions that the people in the movie are coming to. The whole thing was very artfully crafted for very particular reasons and to create a certain affect.

So many movies are done a little haphazardly. There's a lack of connection in the plotline and the characters seem to do things in a random way. Not so here. The big difference is the amount of detail used. The writers and the director seemed to intentionally go for substance over using tried and true strategies. I noticed they didn't over-rely on certain shots and soundtrack and things like that. Don't get me wrong, they did very artful shots and also had a soundtrack, but they didn't use it like so many others do. It wasn't there as a shortcut; it was there for a reason. They didn't always play the "the killer is coming" music. They didn't stage those cheesy "dunt dunt dunhnh" moments all the time, so when those moments actually came, they were more significant. I got chills, honest-to-goodness-full-body-goosebumps. Twice! That only happened because I was so fully sucked into the story and what had happened. I was invested in it. I felt like I was viewing it all happen first person. The story was mine.

There's a message here for writers too. All of this stuff with intentional movie-making and how this impacted me is true for good writing. Don't rely on cliches. Don't do the tried and true stuff all the time or it will become cliched. Go for substance and take your time. Get the reader to care. The details in this movie paid off. They are what allowed me to experience it as it happened. One example here. There are multiple scenes that happen where the cartoonist and the newspaper reporter have desks. I have no idea what the San Francisco Chronicle work area looked like in the late sixties and early seventies. No idea. But in this movie, there was a huge room, the size of a school cafeteria, and it had fifty desks in it, all cluttered with paper and the debris of working. I didn't look at each desk, but I'd venture a guess that each one was slightly different in terms of how much clutter and personalization. The movie-makers didn't have to go to that effort. How many people actually look at a desk that is fifteen rows from the main desk where the two characters are talking? Probably none. But...rather than have the set be a smaller area with just enough detail for them to shoot the two characters around one desk, the movie-makers went through the effort of constructing the whole room and each individual desk with its own clutter. That's what makes it real. I believe that is what the SF Chronicle area looked like during that time period. That belief and that trust allow me to believe all of the rest of it.