The Killer : Why David Fincher's Professionalism isn’t appealing in Hollywood Anymore

The Professionalism of a Detective or a Killer

on David Fincher's The Killer

Early in the morning, a contract killer awakens in an abandoned office, proceeds through his morning routine, lays out a yoga mat, stretches his body, dons headphones, and carefully stands beside the window, observing the location where his target is expected to appear. But instead of the voice-over which drones on and on about "redundancies", it is the film’s stringent way of mise-en-scene that captures our attention: each action is deconstructed into meticulously composed frames with exquisite lighting; subtle changes in focus and camera movements expertly guide the audience's gaze.

Drawing on the character's traits and professional nature, David Fincher's latest film, The Killer, boldly reaffirms his directorial commitment to "professionalism", which transcends refined audiovisual techniques and extends to how these techniques are employed and organized through mise-en-scene: "People will say, ‘There are a million ways to shoot a scene’, but I don't think so. I think there're two, maybe. And the other one is wrong." This suggests that Fincher not only pursues precision, but also seeks a form of exclusive, "unique" precision. Here, professionalism equates to a kind of perfectionism, a compulsive artistic perspective inherited from a generation of filmmakers like Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Coppola, standing in contrast to another lineage characterized by loose, free, and ambiguous styles, represented by filmmakers such as Cassavetes, Altman, Larry Clark and the Safdie brothers. These divergent approaches constitute the two extremes of contemporary American cinema.

However, concerning Fincher's provocative and decisive statement, even if we refrain from exploring the specifics of what constitutes right and wrong (given its implications for the authorship and political dimensions of cinema), a critical question arises: How does a filmmaker determine what is right and wrong? Distinct answers to this query can delineate two fundamentally opposing manifestations of professionalism: the first, grounded in the intrinsic nature and structure of each scene and object, seeks the most suitable way of mise-en-scene for each; the second treats a specific way of mise-en-scene as an unequivocally correct paradigm, applying it uniformly across all scenes and objects.

1. The Professionalism of a Detective

The first manifestation of professionalism finds expression in Fincher's masterpiece, Zodiac. Diverging from Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia which delves into conspiracy theories and offers erotic deductions of a pending criminal case, Zodiac presents a meticulous and dignified portrayal of historical reality. Murders (restricted to those with survivors where recollections of the crime process exist) and the subsequent years of investigation quietly unfold between dates and subtitle cards. Within the intricacies of plotlines and timelines, the tone across different sections exhibits complexity and variation rather than uniformity: there are straightforward and almost archival narratives (more prevalent in the first half) and also dramatic scenes imbued with the heavy rhetoric characteristic of Hollywood-style entertainment (more prevalent in the second half); there are extensive omissions and jumps as well as meticulous sections that unravel around a particular scene. This type of professionalism can be characterized as a form of detective professionalism, where the director shares the same investigative spirit as his characters: the detectives, the journalist, and the cartoonist deduce the most plausible assumptions for different clues, while Fincher determines the most "right" way to present each scene and object. Although this approach inevitably carries a certain narrative fiction akin to reportage, the fiction is crafted to approach reality, just as assumptions are made to uncover the truth.

2. The Professionalism of a Killer

On the contrary, The Killer exemplifies the second type of professionalism, that of a killer. From the very beginning, we are informed that the identity of the target is irrelevant; what holds significance is killing each target in the exact same, flawless manner. The killer is unwaveringly committed to this creed, mirroring the director's obsession with applying the same absolute "right" paradigm of mise-en-scene to everything. Thus, what unfolds in the film's first twenty minutes, besides the meticulous and orderly cinematography resembling comic book panels, is the repetitive execution of the same inelegant method: two subjective narrative times, distinguished by shooting scale and sound design -- psychological time characterized by voice-over and sensory time characterized by headphone music -- are interwoven in a continuous cross-cutting flow, attempting to achieve complete immersion by aligning the perspectives of the characters and the audience. However, this endeavor only results in a noisy sense of detachment.

Nevertheless, if the killer’s professional creed is momentarily shaken by a wayward bullet, the subsequent revenge journey serves as a reaffirmation and emphasis on this creed: the protagonist sequentially eliminates a taxi driver, his boss, his boss’s secretary and two other killers, each adhering to the professionalism template of "cutting through the red tape". During the tracking and preparation stages, we consistently witness numerous smoothly executed tracking shots, steadicams and focus pulls, along with numerous close-up shots immersed in carefully crafted blur layers. However, all these shots that seem to focus on objects or spaces are, in reality, unrelated to the objects and spaces themselves; they are merely present to convey the killer's professional observational gaze. Consequently, under Fincher's signature blue-yellow color grading, these objects and spaces appear so similar and homogenized. The absolute and "right" universal paradigm of The Killer is what we commonly refer to as a film's "style", which should have originated from the combination of various mise-en-scene choices for specific scenes and objects, constituting an effect in constant motion and change. However, it is now pursued as an absolute static cause and principle that transcends everything, which is tantamount to putting the cart before the horse.

3. Professionalism as a Hollow Style

Fincher's pursuit of the "right" way of mise-en-scene finds him wavering between the two types of professionalism. It appears that only when the inherent attributes of the subject compel him to meticulously and specifically choreograph scenes does he lean towards the former extreme. The Social Network, Fincher's relatively successful work, is also an investigation: not into a murder case, but into a business litigation case, into the origin of the era's largest internet product, into a genius's motives and a fractured friendship. In this case, Fincher and his screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, had to summon the spirit of detective professionalism for a thoughtful fabrication. Conversely, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a pseudo-biographical film swiftly descends into a vacuous, saccharine, and melancholic fairy tale; and all of Fincher's mystery films, excluding Zodiac, spanning from Seven and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to his most acclaimed Fight Club, entirely substitute dialectical inquiry into truth with unambiguous tricks and reversals. In these films, Fincher's perfectionism endures, but due to the absence of tangible subjects, it transforms into a polished and taut stylistic embellishment.

The collaboration with Netflix serves as the final blow for Fincher: the streaming giant values only a filmmaker's capacity to craft a style, and the filmmaker, having been given a large investment and creative freedom, was happy to push the style to the extremes of vacuousness and bluster in the most uninspired way possible - Refn's Copenhagen Cowboys released earlier in the year had been the living antithesis of this. After emulating the film noir texture of the 1940s in his first Netflix film Mank, Fincher now replicates his own style in The Killer: some cool satire, a few feigned intense actions, and consistently sumptuous sound and lighting. Capitalizing on the minimalist or vacuous pretext provided by the John-Wick-like revenge narrative, Fincher reproduces his professional style in the most singular and unified manner. However, the ways of mise-en-scene that once varied within contexts and according to specific scenes and objects, are now solidified into an unvarying aesthetic order propelled forward with unwavering correctness. The killer's blunder is that he merely aims to complete another task, and Fincher's failure stems from his desire to produce yet another "Fincher film".

wirtten by ANNI