David Fincher's serial killer chat 'em up MINDHUNTER

everyone keeps decribing this as a fincher project -- and obviously his name is going to be biggiest on the marquee -- but it was devised and written by joe penhall, and i believe it's ultimately his concept that fincher is realising (tho i think penhall is more of a backseat role in s2)

I mean yeah, but Fincher's style and tone are so specific to his body of work that it can't help but seem like it's in conversation with stuff like Zodiac. It's a very specific aesthetic and it greatly informs how we interpret the narrative! It's very easy for me to imagine the same scripts redone in the style of Criminal Minds or whatever and just being background watching at best.

ok fair, i haven't seen zodiac -- i just feel some of the cloudiness of intent we're identifying (by disagreeing!) may be the consequence of this being a collective project in a way that a kneejerk auteurism is muffling?

ok fair, i haven't seen zodiac

i was watching adventures with tip and oh

oh, here’s a tip: watch zodiac

oh yeah, I just rewatched zodiac last month because my spouse had never seen it and I think it may be my favorite fincher thing by a whole lot.

it’s a masterpiece

It very slowly worked its way into my favorite movies ever, one of the ones I instantly think of when I'm thinking, "I want to watch a movie, what do I want to watch?"

also watch numb3rs, so you don't accidentally make worrisome pronouncements like this

mindhunter is better than numb3rs obviously, everything is

never

I think Carl Franklin in particular brings a slightly different vibe in the last three eps...kind of a southern noir or cary fukunaga TD season one thing. That push in on Williams!

Also that really cool slow pan up to the cloudy silhouetted now conspiratorial APD in the last ep.

I was thinking Numbers was Murder by Numbers. Not the case.

watching numb3rs is murder by numb3rs

bcz it's bad

not good

hug3 if tru3

mindhunter is better than numb3rs obviously

i would have put money on the opposite of this being a classic mark s "i will be taking no further questions at this time" challop deeply considered and thought provoking opinion.

off his gam3

i will be taking no further cheekiness at this time

(I’ve actually noticed watching this that I dislike when things happen. There really is this odd Fincher effect where everything sweeps neatly along a certain process and it feels annoyingly disruptive when something new intrudes on that.

I really like this thought...and it explains that effect in Zodiac where the murders are felt as almost cosmically disruptive to the movie that is supposedly about them! (And aside from the extremely no thanks daylight lake berryessa murder none of them are particularly gruesome.)

one minute of jonathan being whipped for holt speaking french pic.twitter.com/lrxCYNOzVQ

— ً (@mindcunter) August 28, 2019

omg

I liked this: I guess I should watch Zodiac? It's just the cast - it's like they deliberately hired actors I can't stand.

echoing all the zodiac praise earlier itt

and yeah it's tough not to like Ruffalo, RDJ etc by contrast. of course I find McCallany immensely likeable so YMMV

Ruffallo is fine. RDJ, Gyllenhaal and Sevigny are usually passes from me. But I can’t sleep so gotta watch something...

ZODIAC RULES YOU BETTER WATCH IT

anyway I just finished s2

i like that this season showed the push & pull of the actual work of profiling, the tiring drain of it all & the hollow victories of “catching” the “killer”

the Tench kid storyline was a bit on the nose but I didn’t hate it. I love how the actor who plays Bill really wore his emotional exhaustion in every aspect of his scenes, down to his silhouette walking away from camera

next season could get interesting - in John Douglas lore, his experience on the Atlanta case made him much more aware of the victims families & changed his approach to profiling: pulling away from the pure science of the pursuit made him better at his job.

all of the actors playing the murderer’s row really turned it out. The guy playing Wayne Williams was eerily on the money; Berkowitz was perfectly pathetic; and my boy Damon Herriman knocked it out of the park as Manson - though the prosthetic makeup was a bit too noticeable, only a minor quibble. His act of sitting on top of the chair after walking in is one of the memorable details from the real interview.

loved Tench-as-audience-surrogate in that scene

what the show is trying to tell the audience is that murder, especially serial, sexually motivated homicide, is chaos. The pursuit of the “why” never evens the scales in any satisfactory way, even when the right person is caught. The hollowness of the s2 ending is important

also the air of dissatisfaction that comes from their interviews, of hearing these men say over and over how they either didnt commit the acts at all or that they didnt feel anything etc - being immersed in their chaos & trying to bring logical order to that, it really erodes a part of your soul over time - a profiler bears the weight of just how much base violence lies within a person & how many there are just out in the world.
there’s an ironic kind of helplessness in a job like that; a success means there has already been wasted lives, and often just serves to highlight how much more work is needed to apprehend similar offenders.

the whole thing is bummertown usa. that’s why the show is great, because it makes you feel that.

wait that sucks though, the whole usa is bummertown usa, art is supposed to uplift us

have you seen a David Fincher project before

it was kind of uplifting when whatsername tattooed that guy on the stomach

Okay, Zodiac was good! Part of the reason I've been putting it (and Manhunter) off is that I don't like torture/sexual violence in stuff at the best of times when I'm running 'up' I get positively squeamish. But these were fine for me because they were character studies/contrasts in philosophies rather than 'watch this really terrible thing happen and later on we'll make you feel better by killing the baddie'.

I'm the only person I know who didn't care for Zodiac and I don't really know why I didn't

I just finished S1 of this, and read the thread, and can't wait for S2, and there have been lots of great posts itt!

I loved both the tickling principal and thought the Debbie "subplot" were vital to the architecture of the first season. Tickling principal needed to exist to show Holden's own intrusive behaviour, and the danger of when his work goes into "pre-cog"-- and yet, it's clear he's right? Debbie needed to be a part of the story because (aside from her being a human foil for the alien Holden) it showed a real-life consequence of his presumptions; just as Holden created an ideal scenario for Devier to confess, and Devier confessed, and this could be construed as "coercion", Holden created an ideal scenario for Debbie to break-up with him, and Debbie didn't stop him from doing so-- Holden played himself, this situation could've gone much differently.

otm

I had to look up the tickling thing for season 1. I totally forgot about that.

After seeing ten hours of Holden being smart and over-thinking and physically uptight and sanctimonious and patronizing, I texted my ex-bf "am I Holden" and he texted me back "oh definitely"

lol
sad trombone

I don't think I'd let tickling dude near my kids.

no fucking way

oh fuck no

OK dumb question, perhaps, but:

a. Why was Shepard let go?
b. Why was he so mad at Holden about it?

I mean, I guess it's because (under Shepard's watch) there was lying about the "cunts", but I otherwise don't understand why Shepard would be forced out to be replaced by a more sympathetic individual, nor do I understand why Shepard would exclusively blame Holden. (It seems more likely that the higher-ups wanted Shepard gone because they have far greater faith in the unit's work than Shepard himself did? idk. I don't quite get it.)

It’s a bureaucracy

I watched that scene again and again and I still don't get it. "Someone had to take the fall" for what? Who required it? I just don't get it, and I don't understand the basis for most of Shepard's accusations.

Oh wait, I just remembered the last scene with the OPR. Maybe that was the direct cause? Not "cunts" or the principal or anything else but Holden's unrestrained contempt for the inquiry process?

Anyway that scene (where Shepard dresses Holden down) was really intense I watched it several times

That wasn't really clear to me either. Closest I can get is that Holden's behaviour was bad and demanded some response but the bureau didn't want to lose or stifle their boy genius so they punished his boss instead? Which would also mean that Gunn didn't actually make the OPR go away.

I refuse to write multiple paragraphs explaining bureaucracy

can you point us to the guy who wont

credit flows up, blame flows down, rivals for hierarchical fealty plunder and poach one another's institutional resources (esp. the productive or promising achievements of subordinates) in order to define the appearances of success in the face of uncertainly fluctuating external conditions