Zodiac

I went to see David Fincher's new film yesterday - with, I'll admit, a degree of trepidation. I know something of the story of the Zodiac Killer (I've owned the Robert Graysmith book for quite some time, but have never got round to reading it, *bah*) and did not feel that the long, sprawling saga of the unsolved murders suited Fincher's flashy, showy directorial style. After all, this is the guy who made Se7en: perhaps the very epitome of the gimmicky, crude, horrific and (above all) unrealistic serial killer movie. But I'm happy to say that I walked away pleasantly surprised, having seen a gripping and exceptionally well made film.

First off, Fincher restrained his more extrovert directorial tendencies. There were some striking shots - not least of the murder in the taxi cab and of the Golden Gate bridge itself - but these completed the movie and were not at all ostentatious or distracting. Instead, Fincher tried other methods to make him new film stand out from the crowd. He has a number of long scenes, very much focused on dialogue and allowing his actors to do their stuff. The initial police interrogation of the most likely suspect sticks in my mind. The way it was so long, with so many minor details included, and the way it was acted in such a restrained way made it far more memorable (and unsettling) than the standard interrogation scene you would see in a serial killer movie. Fincher also managed to justify the film's long running time - there was not really a moment wasted, and even the slower scenes helped to give this viewer a sense of the long period of time covered in the film.

But above all, this was a film that tried to be realistic - and, to a large extent, succeeded. Unlike other real life serial killer flicks, it set out to tell the story in as much detail as possible. It was like watching modern history on the big screen. In some respects it was like Spike Lee's Summer of Sam - but whereas that picture focused on the lives of New Yorkers linked to the serial killing spree, Zodiac placed itself in the heart of the long, sprawling investigation. Every part of the film was believable.

First of all, the characters were strikingly real. No-one was perfect. The police were presented as tired, overstretched, portly and prone to petty arguments over jurisdiction. They weren't malign, or overly heroic - just normal people, trying to cope with extraordinary events. They also, on several occasions, pointed out that with the numbers of deaths occurring in California each year (both accidental deaths and murders), the number of people confirmed killed by the Zodiac were a mere drop in a far wider ocean. The nominal hero of the movie, Robert Graysmith, was also presented as a flawed - and consequently very human - character. He was a bit of a geek, a non-drinking, non-smoking "eagle scout first class", who became obsessed with the Zodiac case to the cost of just about everything else. There was also a wonderful lack of heroics - people responded to the crimes as you would expect - as panicked victims, jaded news paper professionals, over-excited cartoonists and weary but determined police men.

But above all the flow of the narrative was strikingly realistic. The criminal escaped not because of one massive blunder, but a whole myriad of uncertainties and mistakes, caused by flawed memories, drink problems, vanished witnesses, failures of police forces to talk to each other and other, very human, failings. Finally the film also acknowledged the ambiguities still affecting this case - whilst it strongly suggested that Arthur Leigh Allen committed the murders, it also highlighted other suspects and added at the end that DNA tests would appear to reject Allen as being the Zodiac. The lack of a clear resolution to the mystery (and the lack of an exciting, rousing denouement) may cost the film massive box office success, but does allow it to reflect reality.

Which is why I think Zodiac will stand out as one of the most interesting films of the summer. Against a backdrop of lame superhero sequels, gratuitously violent horror films and robots in disguise, a film that presents recent history and one of the great unsolved mysteries in a realistic but compelling way is something of a rarity. And is all the better for it.