Jake needs you to know

With Zodiac - albeit a skeletal Zodiac - released on 24 July, the film has been receiving fresh attention from the critics, hopefully reminding audiences and critics alike that this is a film to remember when the year is done. One such review stood out to me and that was in the LA Times, which hails Zodiac as making 'literal the underlying theme of Fincher's career. It's a paean to obsession, a dream match of subject and filmmaker.'


'In sticking to the facts, Zodiac is notably indifferent to the requirements of the typical crime movie. The canvas is bigger, the time span longer, the plot more detailed, the overall shape more diffuse and the resolution altogether less reassuring. Zodiac does not subvert so much as methodically exhaust the genre, and therein lies its unexpected genius.'


'Bookended by Donovan's hippie anthem Hurdy Gurdy Man (indelibly desecrated by its chilling use here), Zodiac is a period piece that commemorates the passing of a period... But Zodiac sticks around for the grim hangover, as the thrill of the chase cedes to the fatigue of failure (and the occasional flash of hindsight). Perhaps even more than obsession, the film's real subject and secret weapon is that most underrated of virtues: patience.'


The countryside, threatening and beautiful at the same time, and the force of the elements has been a distraction for some of us over the last day or two, and has reminded me of Jake Gyllenhaal's experience in the mountains of Canada, filming Bokeback Mountain. Here, Jake discusses what that was like and how isolated he felt, being there on his own: "I remember I would go home on the weekends and I'd be alone for two days in Calgary and the only thing I'd be waiting for was the Calgary Stampede."


Jake is in reflective mood in this interview, discussing in length the difference between Jack and Ennis and between Jake and Heath. "If Ennis were to completely come out of his shell, would the two of them still be in the relationship that the two of them are in throughout the film? I don't know. And it was a struggle to keep that up when you're feeling a little lonely."


"I remember when I saw Sense and Sensibility, my Mom always said that I walked out saying, 'I feel so clean'. I think you walk out of this film feeling devastated in a lot of ways but also feeling a real sense of benevolence, and I think the process of making the film produced that too. I mean, yes, he manipulated us. Yes, in a way he very gently abused us, but I walked out of this experience going, there's a real benevolence to this. Like if Heath and I could do this, then it should be okay for the real people who are really doing this to do it."


We also hear that Jack Twist is a bad dancer, clearly something that Jake cannot relate to, signifying to Jake that Jack lived in a different kind of reality. Jake says he played the role completely honestly with Anne Hathaway - in other words, that there was no attempt to disguise the true nature of Jack's fishing trips. He believed that Lureen - and Anne - would have known.


In contrast "Heath's whole thing was hiding, and hiding, and hiding. I think that's what makes the two of us different as personalities. I'm just not the kind of person who can really hold in. You ask any of my friends. Unless it's a very important secret or something they really need me to hold onto, I'm the first person to be like, 'I'm really feeling this, and I really need you to know'."

Includes pictures from IHJ.