We did everything we could to be impressed and alarmed by David Fincher, but with Zodiac, most of his energy and aggression is gone, says David Thomson. Meanwhile, what would Fincher do? He gave us Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box.
The disregard of audiences was by now as unmistakable as the appetite for intricate, arcane horror - and in Seven, lo and behold, Fincher had a character who really embodied these energies. He was Kevin Spacey in those happy days when Spacey was accepting the notion of his own gloating villainy. The developing solvent seemed to have moved from urine to excrement.
Seven is still one of the great cop pictures that can't help itself from sliding into a burial pit. It is a very nasty film, in great part because Fincher took the nastiness in complete earnest. Of course, Seven, like Psycho, got a lot of criticism because it was so gleefully, liberatingly shocking.
And even its admirers felt Fincher's profound attraction to evil. But at the end of the 20th century, why not? His next film, The Game, had astounding moments, but it suffered from the playfulness of the concept and a reluctance in Michael Douglas and Sean Penn to get it on together.
It was a film that had no need to be made, whereas Alien3 and Seven seemed the natural outpourings of an unstoppable disgust. And disgust - if you think about it - has little history in American film, yet great provocation in American life. I think Fincherites forgave The Game, and sensibly so.
But Fight Club was the truly controversial film. Was it brilliant or a sell-out? Coming from the Chuck Palahniuk novel, with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton at their very best, and with Helena Bonham-Carter unforgettable, Fight Club was like a new youth cult - violence for violence's sake.
For its first half it was like the invention of a brilliant new sport. But then something happened. There was advance alarm about what the film was suggesting - quite reasonably.
For, in truth, the film was asking: I wonder why talented kids can think of nothing better to do than beat themselves to pulp. Themselves or other countries? And then Fincher flinched.
The film adjusted its basis - you have to see this to get the betrayal. For me, a brave beginning ended up a dud. Then there was Panic Room, which seemed to be about decor and design more than the way people live.
It was a suspense film, about a woman and her threatened child, and it got Jodie Foster after Nicole Kidman had to drop out. There were some of us who wanted to see Fincher driving Nicole crazy. And Jodie does crazy in a very sane way.
The new film, Zodiac, is the worst yet, a terrible disappointment in which an ingenious and deserving all-American serial killer nearly gets lost in the meandering treatment of cops and journalists obsessed with the case. A great deal of Fincher's energy and most of his aggression are gone. Perhaps he would say he has grown up - isn't that a good thing?
Well, yes, for all of those who know him and live with him. But it begins to suggest that American movies are still best just short of growing up.
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