Monday, June 18, 2007

Dark Eye

David Fincher makes dark, serious, brooding films, and just to make certain the audience understands just how dark and serious the films are, he shoots them in very low-light and nobody smiles. This is all right up to a point but why choose to work from such a limited palette time and time again?

Many filmmakers nowadays seem to struggle to find a balance between serious intent and entertainment. What one sees are films that are either very earnest, in a politically correct ‘lets try and understand this’ kind of way, or just good old-fashioned dumb, with a diminishing space in between.

Zodiac is the ‘based on a true story’ story behind the serial killer that partly inspired the first Dirty Harry film. The film is certainly not a bad one and it moves smoothly along its (as is often the case nowadays) overlong running time, but I think it would have benifited greatly from a bit more colour.