Zodiac was one of the best early 21st century art films. Obsessively appropriating the genre and stylistic tropes of the police procedural, Zodiac feels like it will come to a conclusion – the killer gets caught or we come away with a statement about San Francisco in the late 60s, or… something – something to hold onto… to take away with us as a reminder that things do come together. But Zodiac is perverse. It refuses. The plot gets overwhelmed with all of the data. Plot lines are lost. Things routinely hit dead ends. Information begins to refer to other pieces of information. Endless layers of memories of other memories of half-remembered bits of memory going nowhere forever.
Eventually the sense that a knife went through flesh is rendered obsolete because we’re all too busy keeping up with the most recent information.