Thursday’s Cinema Studies seminar was a little denser than in the past. Usually the routine goes a little like this; we have a little class discussion at the start, dive into re-watching scenes from the movie watched the week previous and then analyse together. Certainly, we did all of those things. But not only did we discuss the Life Aquatic, but also the Zodiac. I’m personally quite a fan of the Zodiac – I went into the screening without any pre-conceived notions, except that I knew the film was going to be long. I didn’t know anything about the Zodiac killer (aside from the occasional online meme – like the theory that Ted Cruz is in fact, the infamous murderer).

We ended up talking about Mise En Scene and Aspects of the shot with both these films. Last week I already did a little analysis on the Life Aquatic from home when sick, so I’m going to spend this post devoted to the Zodiac.

In order to discuss the aspect of the shot, we re-watched the entire opening scene of the Zodiac. Arguable the most comforting of the whole film, in which we following a couple on their journey from Darlene picking her boyfriend up, all the way to their brutal murders in Lover’s Lane. One of the very early shots, which is from the POV within the car looking out the side window, is cinematically very beautiful. It’s also affective in triggering that unease within the viewer – I know that when the boy ran up to the car I thought the killer would be in the driver’s seat because of how ominous and ambiguous the perspective of the car had seemed leading up to that point.

The ‘god shot’ when the couple first drive into Lover’s lane is used to show just how deserted the area is and the lighting of the car headlights with the blackness all around creates a kind of entrapped feeling. Fincher also used close, tight shots from within the car to make you feel apart of the constriction, almost trapped with them. This ‘god’ perspective is not used the entire confrontation, until after the gunman is returning back from his car to ‘finish’ them off when he could see movement still.