Zodiac - getting into the head of a Hollywood director

It's never been a secret that Jake Gyllenhaal found David Fincher's style of direction frustrating, tiring and, as Jake has always made it clear that film-making should be fun, not fun. As Jake said to TotalFilm "My idea of what is easy and what is hard has been completely changed by this film. The first day, the first set-up, we did 67 takes. I was trying to determine if it was a joke." By the end of day two, I imagine Jake knew what he was in for.


This week, an article in The Times endeavours to look into the heads of David Fincher and other directors of his generation, asking if they are out of step with what America wants. The writer suggests that Fincher, Quentin Tarantino, David O Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh and Spike Jonze shaped 90s' cinema with films such as Se7en, Pulp Fiction and Magnolia. But, the article argues, that was it; they stopped delivering and they lost their 'connection to previously adoring audiences'. The evidence for this is, apparently, the relatively poor showing of Zodiac and Tarantino's Grindhouse, at the American box office.

Fincher believes that Zodiac is much more to the taste of European audiences but he admits that there has been a problem because Zodiac is not what Fincher fans will be expecting. "It's just people talking, and it's hard to make an audience realise they have to be paying attention." It is arguable that Fincher had plenty of notice that he may have been approaching the film in the wrong way from the beginning - 'He refused to listen to studio executives who wanted him to make the film accessible, and infuriated the actors - Downey said he wanted to "garrotte" him - with as many as 100 takes for some shots." So it wasn't just Jake then, even though most media attention has fallen on Jake as the ringleader of what has been presented as near-mutiny on set.


Fincher is stubborn and focused to the last: "I think perfectionism has gotten a bad rap".

To be fair, I tend to agree with him. He might be infuriating but he got the performances out of his leads that he knew they had in them and the result is, in my opinion, extraordinary and extremely evocative - it's just not the thriller people might have expected.

I came across another review online this week, which agrees with me that this film is a masterpiece. 'It's a movie of shadows, noise and gunfire. It's about those nights when each grain of sand on a gravel road makes its own sound under the weight of a black Mustang. The movie embodies the intoxicating, bewildering, constant threat of murder, a phenomenon unique to a community invaded by a serial predator.'


As for the length which, it's been suggested, is too long for theatre-goers: 'Its fuse may burn for almost three hours, but it must.' David Fincher's notorious meticulousness, so infuriating to his cast, reaps rewards for us. 'Like a novel, Zodiac sprawls out and revels in tiny details. It loves the names of places. It cares about whether the Zodiac killer wrote his "k" with two strokes or three. It's fascinated with the guy who knows a guy. It appreciates the trickiness of warrants. And it has the right - because it's unsolved - and the guts to sincerely invest in red herrings. It's about the pursuit of truth, not the revelation of it.'

'Zodiac is ordinary enough to be unsettling and twisted enough to be compelling. It will be long forgotten for the 2008 Oscar season, but it's the craftiest, best film of the early year.'

In under two weeks, European audiences will be able to judge for themselves if Zodiac is to its taste. I hope the answer is a resounding 'yes'.

The Times Online article gives you another opportunity to watch the video of Jake talking about Zodiac - as well as the chance to enter a Zodiac competition.

Pictures from IHJ.