“I still don’t follow your point.”
Ditto.
“because it’s like the anti-’Se7en.”
Check.
“It’s this incredible exercise in dialectic”
Don’t check.
What’s the synthesis there Matt? You win some you lose some? that sometimes truth will be revealed, while other times it is not? Because if the truth is’ unequivocal’ in ‘Seven’, we are just comparing certainty vs uncertainty.
“It’s not pointless. It’s a version of the difference between classicpolice detective work and criminal profiling (the effectiveness of which is not very strongly support by empirical evidence). There are always competing systems at work to produce knowledge. Any university student could affirm this.”
it’s pointless because police work isn’t about reaching an ‘objective’ eternal truth in the platonic sense, it’s entirely provisional(although perhaps Graysmith doesn’t see it that way, that’s why he continues to pursue, rather naively). that’s why cases are reopened when more evidence comes to light. Graysmith is trying to construct his own case using the ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ presented to him, which admittedly isn’t much.
SANTINO: I wouldn’t trust Assayas as far as i could throw him.
Matt Parks
“In what way is Zodiac the “anti-Se7en?””
In the broadest sense, dialetic:
thesis: killer gets unequivocally identified and caught by the proper authorities investigating the case, his motivations are revealed (Se7en) . . . the truth is so unequivocal, in fact that it literally shows up, redhanded, of its own accord and says “here I am!”.
antithesis: marginal figure with tangential relationship to the case spends years investigating the case, produces plausible (sorta) hypothesis, confrontation with the suspect ends ambiguously, the police fail, no one confesses, no one is punished, etc.
synthesis: gonna let you do this part yourself.
“But is acknowledging or depicting the idea that we sometimes don’t find the answers we seek really satisfying? The film has to do more than that, right?”
Well, we’re talking at the level of lowest-low level generalizations, right? I’m not sure what sort of “more than that” you’re looking for, but the film absolutely does more than that at the level of specificity.