Unravelling A Riddle
Aditya Srikrishna
Mysteries have always been made for fascinating viewing. Alfred Hitchcok, the most influential of them all made a whole career out of them. But with a theme that is often repeated, it’s easy to go haywire and spoil the larger canvas. We see that happening to almost every mystery/thriller flick coming out of India. A murder mystery needs stellar writing and tremendous hold on the proceedings as part of the director to see it through and quite literally, thrill the audience.
That is the reason why traditional whodunnits always score. There are murders and psychopathic first acts followed by the crime scene events, investigation, bureaucracy (in a more thought out story) and ultimately the resolution – the killer convicted. Here you have some set pieces to have the audience constantly interested which when overdone can lead to a migraine. The only takeaway would be the denouement. But what if it’s a true story – a spine chilling one at that – that the world has seen and followed over decades of investigation? More importantly, decades of investigation that haven’t ended. A story where you don’t have the high point of the ultimate denouement. How do you hold the audience interest there? Well, for starters, by stellar film making.
Zodiac(2007), directed by David Fincher, based on Robert Graysmith’s bestseller, is one such example of excellent film making. Zodiac is about the hunt for the eponymous serial killer who committed gruesome murders in and around the Bay area in California between the late 1960s and early 1970s. The murders spanned a large area in the state of California with police departments of several counties involved in simultaneous investigation. The Zodiac serial killer was known for his audacity with the investigative authorities and newspaper reporters, constantly sending letters and cryptic texts to them. The case is known to have been closed and reopened repeatedly over the years and to this date remains an unsolved crime in California.
The beauty of the film is in the way it is structured, constantly maintaining a murky undertone much like the ordeal the police officials and newspaper reporters go through with the case. The whodunnit recipe is rendered useless here as the audience already know that there is going to be no closure. There is no rug underneath to pull in a story like this one. The props are all within the investigation and how the whole things ties together. It’s not about who the serial killer is but about how the investigators piece the things together while holding their senses in a case as baffling as Zodiac’s. And some of the characters don’t succeed in it either. There are characters that lose their calm and there are characters whose convictions are tested.
The film starts out slow showing us the second killing in detail. This is the point where the investigators begin to take Zodiac seriously as he repeats his gruesome attacks. Paul Avery(Robert Downey Jr.), a San Francisco Chronicle crime reporter receives letters and ciphers from the Zodiac. Robert Graysmith (Jack Gylenhall) is a cartoonist in the same newspaper who shows interest in the ciphers and ends up solving it and guessing the Zodiac’s actions when they start to take him seriously. As the clues start unraveling and a determined set of investigators David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) try to nail Zodiac, we are sucked in by the sheer realism of it all. A perceived multidimensional feeling develops as we imagine ourselves being involved in the investigation. There are moments of triumph when clues are unearthed and suspects are discovered.
As the investigators hit a roadblock and Paul Avery becomes paranoid eventually turning to alcohol, the film seemingly loses pace. The effect is only seemingly because the film moves as gradually as ever but the case does not. The clues lead to no comprehensive answer, the suspects remain suspects by nothing more than circumstantial evidence and we feel the frustration of David Toschi, Paul Avery and Robert Graysmith. Toschi, wonderfully portrayed by a restrained Mark Ruffalo, is falsely implicated of forging a Zodiac letter and removed from the case. All the characters move on except for Robert Graysmith.
Graysmith gets access to police departments of other counties where the murders have taken place and he tries to put together all the information from them for his book on Zodiac. He also talks to the suspects, friends of victims etc. and is further motivated by phone calls, allegedly from Zodiac himself, where he hears nothing but heavy breathing. This is the point where nothing makes sense to us because nothing makes sense to Robert Graysmith. As he obsesses with the case, he loses his family but is endearingly ordered by his wife to finish the book. Graysmith has no hopes of a conviction for the Zodiac killer. All he says is he wants is to know who Zodiac is and look into his eyes.
If Paul Avery is unable to handle the pressure and paranoia as Zodiac’s go-to reporter, David Toschi as the San Francisco detective grows tired of the case and wants out by any means. Graysmith, left all alone in the end, has little to lose and goes on with the case. The way the film is written, as a journey for the audience over decades, through the minds of several people is what makes the film interesting and an unmatched masterpiece. When Graysmith meets up with Toschi one last time and succeeds in convincing the detective of his investigations, Toschi says just two words. The same two words linger in our minds after the movie – “Jesus Christ.”
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The Mystery Continues – June Issue : The Banyan Trees on 06.27.2010
[...] June theme articles are : Unravelling A Riddle – Adithya [...]