Some films, it is said, have enough depth and dimension to the story and the style that multiple viewings aren’t just possible but required. There are famous examples, like Stanley Kubrick’s cipher-esque puzzles 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining, which are teeming with so many symbols and cognitive tricks the full picture is incomprehensible at first. But other than David Fincher’s Fight Club, a famous contemporary example for a film where repeating viewings led to a drastic reevaluation of the movie, the complexity of Fincher’s films is not always immediately obvious. One ironic example is his serial-killer saga Zodiac, which many critics agree is his best film. The density of James Vanderbilt’s script is extraordinary, with a dazzling amount of information constantly chewed out by the huge ensemble of characters, each of whom you need to keep track of and their relationship to one another and to the case. It’s a daunting task for any viewer, but despite this, like the case itself, Zodiac never felt finished. It never felt complete, like it did too much or too little, and needed to either focus the case or make its narrative net even wider. The film never added up, but repeat Blu-ray viewings have, also like the case, jostled free new insights that give the film clarity and meaning. I now accept it as a slight masterpiece, not just as a rousing procedural, but as a perceptive parable of life in the information age and the post-modern search for truth.

Zodiac is Fincher’s epic, chronicling the Zodiac Killer investigation over a staggering, exhausting 22 years. Of the serial killers who gained celebrity in the U.S. media, none are as notorious as the Zodiac. From 1968-1969, he killed at least five people around the San Francisco Bay area, attempted a couple more, and sent strange letters (that were accompanied by a cipher) to newspapers, police stations, and even private citizens. The investigation, which the film details with staggering specificity, hooked reporters (Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Jr.) and detectives (Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards) into its web of false leads and inconclusive findings. Robert Graysmith, who wrote the books upon which the film is based, is a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle and serves, more or less, as the film’s protagonist. He plays the part of the two leads from All the President's Men, one of Zodiac's biggest influences. The narrative structure of Zodiac is itself maze-like, with the main protagonists shifting each act to cycle genres and vantage points, but it’s Graysmith who wrangles the messy happenings of the case into as cohesive a form as probably possible.