Watch: David Fincher and Bong Joon-Ho: Two Directors Obsessed with Perspective

In one sense, and a very large one, in fact, a story is only as good as the perspective from which it is told. Great Expectations might be a lesser tale without the semi-annoying Pip to tell it. Think of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl without the author’s relentless play with points of view. Lewis Criswell’s video essay not only shows us how Bong Joon-Ho’s ‘Memories of Murder‘ influenced David Fincher’s ‘Zodiac‘–and convincingly, given that, as presented here, the one often looks like a blueprint for the other, down to characters’ facial expressions–but also that stories like the one told by both of these films, in which the center of the story, the serial murderer, remains elusive, must rely on the perspectives of their tellers, the characters within the story. Reliable or not, the individuals wrestling with the problem at the story’s heart become our guides through the film. If the mystery remains unresolved, so, too, do the characters remain unresolved or unreachable within viewers’ minds.