Miller isn’t terribly fond of horror movies, and since it was his turn to pick again yesterday, we went for a serial killer movie instead. One of the more famous titles, partially on account of the all-star cast, mostly because of the subject’s more prominent position in American true crime mythos, perhaps because he has never been definitively identified. We chose to watch Zodiac.

My first observation is that Zodiac is an extremely long film. After a long day at work, I had little desire to watch it all the way through in one sitting. In fact, this is now twice in a row that I’ve turned the film off without making it to the end. I can’t even attribute this to the fact that my copy of the film is the director’s cut, as it’s only five minutes longer than the theatrical release. Zodiac is just freaking long. Especially being a dialogue-based story, parts of the film drag quite a lot, making it feel even longer.

Despite the length, it’s hard to find any other fault with Zodiac. Everything from the cinematography to the acting, from the production design to the editing, everything has this impeccably polished quality that’s difficult to describe. Even the inconclusive ending is perfect, not only because it’s true to the real story, but also because everything in the film sets up the fact that the Zodiac will go undiscovered. Between scientific analysis of the evidence ruling out virtually every suspect and the various police departments’ inability to coordinate satisfactorily with each other, they could not but fail. At that point, the Zodiac was no more than a ghost, an idea, where the name was more important than the identity. He could have been anyone. There could have been more than one Zodiac for all anyone knew. No amount of wishing for the Hollywood happy ending can change history.

Overall, I’m of two minds when it comes to Zodiac. While I do consider it to be pretty much flawless except for the length, the length coupled with the pacing is a fairly insurmountable obstacle to me saying that I love this film. I like it a lot, don’t get me wrong. I just get a little impatient if a particularly long film isn’t Cloud Atlas.