Mark Reviews Movies: MANK

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | November 12, 2020

When the alcoholic gambling addict of a rapscallion writer is the most principled person in the room, there's likely a problem. That's the outlook of Mank, director David Fincher's dissection of the writing of Citizen Kane and vivisection of the studio system during Hollywood's Golden Age. It follows screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), as he writes what will become his masterpiece, being visited by ghosts of the past and haunted by memories of his—but mostly other people's—shortcomings in the process.

The film isn't an apologia for Mankiewicz's multiple flaws, which partially lead him to the status of outcast in which we first find him, but relatively speaking, Herman—or "Mank" as he prefers to be called—is more or less a saint. He drinks to excess. He'll gamble thousands of dollars, as one of his fellow studio writers reminisces, on the speed at which a falling leaf will hit the ground. He'll flirt with women, always "platonically" according to his wife, who definitely notices. Mank makes a joke of just about everything, quick with a pointed and rhetorically rhyming retort, and when he gets serious about a given topic, his temper flares. Nobody seems able to tell if he's actually mad or just joking.

Mank is undoubtedly the hero here, though, and we can cry or become enraged by that fact. Mank just laughs—and then goes back to drinking, gambling, flirting, joking, stewing in his sense of self-righteousness, and seeing everyone else as an enemy or a potential enemy-in-the-making. Does he fear that last one or embrace it?

As a character study and an examination of the assorted corruptions of old Hollywood—back when the big sign on the hill, framed perfectly between soundstages on a studio lot, still read "Hollywoodland"—in its golden years, the film is consistently involving. The screenplay, written by the director's late father Jack Fincher, is awash in history, speculation, dramatic license, and larger-than-life personalities made even grander.

Mank is always ready with an improvised bon mot (The dialogue really captures the rat-a-tat rhythm of the era). The studio head honchos, such as Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) and Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley), are malevolent schemers or bald-faced hypocrites. Mank is dismissed or told off by many people, but never quite as well as or with good-hearted intent than by a series of women: his wife "Poor" Sara (Tuppence Middleton), his personal secretary Rita (Lily Collins), and actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), who admires the man's intelligence and wit but, in the story's past and present, fears the damage he's able and willing to bring upon himself.

As for the screenplay's structure, it's more or less in the same mode as Mankiewicz's most renowned script, seeing, as the dramatized version of Mank puts it, the impossibility of capturing a person's entire life in a matter of two hours. Instead, Fincher, the screenwriter, gives us a single through line—the writing of Citizen Kane, circa 1939—and scatters flashbacks throughout the story, in order for us to get a sense of how Mank ended up alone, unwanted by almost everyone, and turning a personal grudge into a cinematic masterpiece.

That's the story. Mank, recovering from a broken leg in a car accident, takes up residence at a ranch in the Mojave Desert. Orson Welles (Tom Burke), the theatrical wunderkind, has enlisted Mank to write the screenplay for his film debut.

While Rita tends to Mank and takes the dictation of the evolving script, assorted people call or visit: fellow collaborator John Houseman (Sam Troughton), who sets a strict deadline and always has a "but" to go with his praise, and his brother Joseph (Tom Pelphrey), who either has an offer or a bribe to get Mank away from the project, and others. Flashbacks reveal how Mank navigated a Hollywood suffering during the Great Depression, became disenchanted with the system on account of a contentious gubernatorial election, and found himself within the inner circle of William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), the wealthiest and most powerful newspaper mogul in the country, whom Mank plans to not-so-secretly condemn in his screenplay.

As scattered as this story is, there's a wealth of pleasures to take from it: the deceptions and hypocrisies of the studio heads, the way that Hollywood finally decides to get involved in politics for its own continued success (using an idea about which Mank only joked), and the insulated attitude of Hearst and his lackeys, willing to dismiss a rising dictator in Germany because the socialist or Communist alternative might hurt their bottom line. We get a sense of Mank along the way, too—inwardly principled but outwardly sarcastic, bitter, and spiteful.

On the filmmaking front, Fincher, the director, offers up a technically polished semi-facsimile of the filmmaking of the era. It's shot in black-and-white (digitally, although he adds reel-change marks in the corner as if it's physical film), while the dialogue soundtrack has the resonance of it being heard in an expansive, echo-friendly theater. There's a lot of noticeable trickery here, either in-camera or achieved digitally, and while Fincher's technical flourishes are patently obvious (both plain to comprehend and on-the-nose), they don't distract from the core of the story being told.

It's a fine one—filled with morally complex or corrupted characters, intrigue of the business and political varieties, dialogue that both is snappy and has something to say, and a bit of mystery about how our flawed hero winds up taking things so personally that he's willing to risk his career. Mank may have the appearance of nostalgia, but there's nothing sentimental or particularly longing for the age it presents.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products