This is the good stuff…
david fincher's zodiac
David Fincher’s Zodiac is the best film no one talks about. I’m not the first person to say it, but I’ll take the case to court because it needs to be repeated again and again…
Zodiac hasn’t penetrated the larger cultural zeitgeist or film lexicon because it’s not as hyperbolic as some of Fincher’s earlier works like Seven or Fight Club (though this is what makes the few scenes of violence in Zodiac exponentially more horrific). But this departure is exactly what makes it so unconventional and exceptional.
This film breaks so many conventions of genre that are associated with the average detective movie that it’s almost an anti-detective detective film. James Ellroy, the self and otherwise proclaimed greatest living crime writer, says of Zodiac, “It’s driven by slow-moving persistence, defined by unknowing… Obsession is as vexing and banal as it is consuming.”
And this notion of obsession onscreen being depicted as broken bottles, bloody knuckles, and busted relationships is maybe the singular most notable convention the film eschews.
More often than not, obsession is quiet. Obsession is weekends at the library. Obsession is documents, mental threads, theories pinned to every inch of available wall space. Obsession is vacuum-sealed meals from the freezer.
In Zodiac, the gumshoes involved—official or otherwise—didn’t become human bar rags, they didn’t send their marriages Splitsville by hitting the sheets with suspect femmes fatal, they didn’t get themselves in situations where they were forced to choose between love and honor, they didn’t go to loose ends (the Paul Avery character was a dipso from Jumpstreet and the marriages of the Richard Greysmith character were doomed far more by his innate asocial personality). Obsession didn’t lead them to ruin. And there’s one other major detective film expectation this film subverts—they didn’t catch the guy.
No spoiler alert should be required here. The hipped viewers know this from the titles. Catching the guy was not what this film was ever going to be about.
It’s about a disparate group of men believing that if they can somehow make sense of seemingly senseless events, they’ll regain their understanding of the unrecognizable and horrifying world they now find themselves in. It’s the attempt to control their own internal turmoil by imposing order on external events.
These men believe The Who will give them The Why, and in turn will give them understanding, The Closure. But as any seasoned homicide detective will tell you, The Closure is one of the biggest shit crocks in our collective psychological assumption. The Who will not give you The Why. Knowing will not distance or insulate you from the horror.
See, or revisit this film. Drink in its elegant accretion and performances from a stellar cast and supremely gifted director.
And remember, sometimes simple ciphers are never truly broken. Sometimes the answer never comes.
DARK CITY: THE REAL LOS ANGELES NOIR, JIM HEIMANN
A visual history like no other, Dark City brings together images from archives, museums, newspaper photo morgues, private collections, and the author's extensive image library to reveal the true grit, grime, and sheer horror stories of Los Angeles from the 1920s to 1950s. In large format, we roam through the back alleys, gin joints, tattoo parlors, gambling dens, nightclubs, and the most brutal crime scenes, to uncover a city crawling with murder and mayhem.
From Sunset Boulevard to a jazz-saturated Central Avenue, tabloid headlines chronicle the most famous celebrities and infamous crimes in a hopped-up city that provided inspiration for journalists, pulp fiction scribes, and filmland script writers in their creation of the noir genre. With rare vintage magazine reprints from the crime tabloids of the time, this is a uniquely evocative visual history through which the crime, crooks, crazies, and mean streets of the City of Angels are transformed from myth to reality.
This book is a must own for noir nuts, Hollywood heads, or both.
