You might think Netflix’s new show Mindhunter is another by-the-book crime procedural, but think again. It’s a wickedly smart investigation into the darkness of the human psyche.
Director David Fincher has made a career out of films that reveal a darker side to humanity. His films are often the subject of grisly murders and violent crime. Mindhunter continues this trend, but in a way that demonstrates a lot more restraint than you might expect.
In fact, Mindhunter helps reveal an important, yet underrated thread that runs throughout Fincher’s filmography: more than simply investigating crime, Fincher works to study the human psyche.
The first episode of Mindhunter opens with the show’s protagonist, Holden Ford, as played by Jonathan Groff, driving onto a crime scene. A man has taken a woman hostage and is threatening to kill her and himself.
Despite his attempt to deescalate the situation, Holden watches as it spirals out of control. Holden says, “Maybe I can help?” The man responds, “I don’t think so,” and turns the gun on himself.
Immediately, the show establishes Holden as helpless despite his enthusiastic efforts. This is one way in which Mindhunter throws off typical genre conventions. Holden is not our average leading man; he is not intimidating, well respected, or even particularly brilliant.
After his failure in the show’s first five minutes, we do not see him dive headlong into another case. We see him teaching and advocating for a revolutionary new way of analyzing and understanding murderers. It’s that idea around which the entire show forms.
Mindhunter is not a crime procedural; it’s an investigation into the human mind and a study of the intersection of psychology and criminology.
Directing the first two episodes of the season, David Fincher intently shows the audience the process of everything that happens on screen. He refuses to show the audience only what happens, but rather how it happens.
Mindhunter relishes in the details, both in human action and interaction; we watch Holden’s nightly routine after he arrives home, an ideological argument he has with his boss, and the beginning of his relationship with Debbie, who challenges Holden’s way of thinking.
Everything about Mindhunter is meticulous, a trademark of Fincher’s style of filmmaking. This characteristic pays off, helping the show to leverage a thoughtful examination into the relationship between psychology and criminology, or more simply, the mind of a criminal.
This style, however, is reflective of a trend in Fincher’s work as a director. Mindhunter is just the latest in a series of projects that reveal this interest. Several of his films deal with this concept explicitly.
Looking as far back as Se7en, which came out in 1995, we can see Fincher dealing with this very same concept.
The film follows two detectives investigating a series of elaborate murders, each of which represents one of the seven deadly sins. To characterize Se7en as simply a crime thriller would be to ignore the ways in which the film tackles a complex, although hyperbolized, depiction of the human psyche.
Sure, Se7en operates primarily as a whodunnit, but drives far deeper into investigating how violence permeates and manipulates the human psyche over time.
In 2007, Fincher directed Zodiac, a film that perfectly illustrates his style of using murder as a gateway into investigating the human mind. What’s so remarkable about Zodiac is that not a single murder takes place after the first 45 minutes. Instead, the film derives all its dramatic tension from the resulting investigation.
This investigation, one that yields fewer leads over time, demonstrates the impact and effects of a crime on those charged with investigating it. Zodiac is exhaustive in its attention to detail, showing us every written letter, every phone call, every interview. It’s easy to see how Fincher’s experiences working on projects like Se7en and Zodiac led him to Mindhunter.
They are chiefly concerned with their investigations and the implications of crime, rather than the act of violence itself.
Furthermore, both of Fincher’s most recent films, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl, construct their main plots around investigations. These films use the investigation of murder — real or otherwise — as a way of revealing the identities of those characters performing the investigation.
In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a discredited journalist and a gifted computer hacker and investigator team up to get to the bottom of a 40 year old murder. The investigation reveals dark family history that reflects a culture of abuse which echoes the protagonists’ own history.
Like Mindhunter, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo uses crime investigation as a gateway to exploring the human mind. Gone Girl operates in a remarkably similar way, exploring the extent to which we will go to preserve our relationships — even if that means framing your husband for your death.
Like so much of Fincher’s work, Gone Girl uses dark, melodramatic elements to amplify the character’s actions and emotions. The result allows for a deeper interrogation of the character’s psyches.
What’s even more curious is the way Fincher’s other films, the ones that do not explicitly deal with crime and murder, still use an investigative structure to examine and define the story at hand.
The Social Network, for example, uses deposition hearings and testimonies as the vehicle for telling Facebook’s origin story. The story is told through flashbacks contextualized by how the characters recount those experiences.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button frames its story through the memories of an elderly woman sick in the hospital. Her memories become a tool for her daughter to investigate and learn about the parts of her mother’s life she was previously unaware of.
Separately, these films are impressive feats of filmmaking that use the medium as a way of investigating the human mind. Together, they create a compelling oeuvre that defines David Fincher as a storyteller.
Mindhunter fits perfectly within his filmography and is worthy of being discussed alongside his other work. The way Mindhunter prioritizes the examination of criminology and, by extension, the investigation of the human mind is firmly aligned with Fincher’s career. It’s a stirring piece of storytelling that stands out within Netflix’s increasingly bland catalog.
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