The search for the identity of a murderer through the years and without apparent conclusion: this is the meaning of the ending of the film by David Fincher.
Let’s say it right away: Zodiac it is not the classic thriller where the mysterious killer is exposed in the finale and the story ends by matching all the pieces of the puzzle that the protagonists try to solve. In his being very dense with events, dates, characters, information, the long film by David Fincher prefers the experience of reconstructing the case rather than giving us the certain satisfaction of its resolution. The ending seems to meet the public, but at the same time leaving it in uncertainty and doubt. Why this double choice that keeps us with the foot in two stirrups leaving us satisfied and at the same time disappointed? Let us try to answer this question by explaining the meaning of the Zodiac ending.
The two sides of the coin
Zodiac is a movie of doubles: the eternal struggle between good and evil, investigate policemen and journalists, the latter in turn divided between the entire editorial team and the obsession with a single, the murders we see (except for that of the taxi driver aimed at “breaking the scheme “of the serial killer) concern two people, a man and a woman, she destined to die he destined to survive. And yet the encrypted language of the letters of Zodiac (name that the killer gave himself) which hides a second language, the ability to write those letters with both hands being the ambidextrous killer and which is described, at the beginning of the film, both like a white than like a black; two are the voices of the witnesses (each declaration always follows a second that denies the first) that create this figure of Zodiac both human and demonic (a Black Man who simply kills and disappears). It is no coincidence, therefore, that the film seems to arrive at the truth and then get lost in a labyrinth of uncertainties and, in the same way, the ending seems to give both a definitive conclusion to the story and leave the doors open making everything unsolved.
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Research and obsession
A duality that also distinguishes the division of the film itself. The first half of Zodiac seems to be a real account of the story from an external and “top” point of view. We are introduced to the protagonists of the film (the cartoonist Robert Graysmith, author of the book from which the film was taken, the investigator Dave Toschi, the chronicler Paul Avery), but the narration proceeds quickly, essentially telling the facts. No background is given for the characters, preferring the story of the case and the progress of the complicated resolution. Captions on the screen, time jumps between one scene and another, a fairly cold and calculated story that gives the idea of a news story, a simple search for the identity of the murderer (although Fincher does not lack the pleasure of entertainment, we think of the murder scenes) which is the real focus of the film. Focus that, in the second half, focuses on the character of Jake Gyllenhaal who, as the years pass and the murderer now seems to be a distant memory, still continues to put together clues. A real obsession that will find peace only when it is able to look the Zodiac killer in the eye.
Absolute truth and individual truth
And in the end Robert Graysmith seems to have really discovered the identity of the murderer. This is Leigh Allen, the neighbor of the first victim who, just over an hour after the murder, had attended a party of her parents, telling, without being believed, that he had killed someone. Allen had been imprisoned for pedophilia and this would explain Zodiac’s obsession with children (in the letters he calls them “dear ones” and constantly threatens to detonate a school bus), his appearance seems to coincide with the description of the witnesses who give the killer and over the years Allen had been searched or interrogated by the police. He is the number one suspect and everything leads to believe that he is the Zodiac, yet “legally” is always cleared. The handwriting of the letters, however similar, never seems to match and even the few fingerprints found in the crime scenes seem to belong to another person. Leigh Allen is, at the same time, guilty and innocent, he is the murderer and yet he is not. Graysmith, while knowing that he is helpless and knowing that the case will probably never find a certain end, has no doubts and in 1983, in a hardware store, he manages to track down Leigh Allen. It is at this point that, for him, the truth has come to the surface: looking his guilty in the eyes, he has finally managed to find the inner peace he was looking for. If an absolute truth has not yet been reached (the case is still ongoing in America), Graysmith’s obsession can be said to be over.
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The poetics of pessimism
However, Fincher decides to end the film with a further clue to Allen’s guilt. The epilogue takes place in 1991 in an airport where a policeman asks Michael Mageau, the boy who survived the murder at the beginning of the film, if he recognizes the face of the murderer among some mug shots. Among these is the face of Leigh Allen on whom Mageau has few doubts: he is the Zodiac. But more than twenty years have passed and there is no certainty. The final captions seem to leave even less doubts about Allen’s guilt (a DNA test would not exclude him from the suspects, from his death – which occurred due to cardiac arrest before he could meet with some policemen after Mageau’s identification – Graysmith no longer receives anonymous calls), but without a really certain answer. Therefore, the first dualism with which we opened our analysis comes to mind: the struggle between good and evil. And we are reminded of another film by David Fincher, his first sensational hit by Seven where even there he was witnessing the hunt for a mysterious murderer by two detectives. In that case, however, the killer was found and killed by Mills (Brad Pitt) thus completing the assassin’s plan (something totally absent in the Zodiac: there is no plan, there is no pattern, there is no is explanation). And we can’t help reminding ourselves of the final joke that ends the film: “Hemingway once wrote: the world is a beautiful place and worth fighting for. I share the second part“So here in both films Fincher ‘s pessimistic vision finds an outlet: the world is complex and ambiguous, the light of truth is too feeble compared to the darkness of evil and goes out quickly.
