[6.9/10] I am always fascinated by movies whose themes and ideas are recursive. That is to say, I’m intrigued when whatever a movie is trying to say can also be said about the movie. Ironically for Mank, a great example of this is Saving Mr. Banks, a 2013 film about the making of Mary Poppins. It stands for the idea that film and fiction can be used to remember the best parts of the people we love and scrub away the bad parts, which the 1960s period does for none other than Walt Disney.
Mank is a film about glorifying writers, about the way their long-nursed grudges and half-truths and personal peccadillos end up making it into their scripts, no matter how abstracted or generalized those elements may become in translation. It features its eponymous scribe punishing the likes of William Randolph Hearst and Louis B. Mayer for their misdeeds by spinning them in a particular light in his draft.
It’s not hard to see screenwriter Jack Fincher (late father of director David), himself a journalist-turned-screenwriter like the title character, playing with the truth of the California gubernatorial election, the writing of Citizen Kane, and Herman J. Mankiewicz’s role in both to make his own point about screenwriters being unsung and of a moral (or at least artistic) bankruptcy among the bigwigs who kick the humble scripturients around.
The catch is that, whoever deserves credit for the writing (and film historians have concluded that Orson Welles’s contributions were numerous, and potentially superseding), the results were that Citizen Kane is a masterpiece. Whatever concomitant beefs with Hollywood or politicking or simple storytelling Mr. Fincher has, the result is a film that’s perfectly fine, but that isn’t within bottle-throwing distance of the movie whose history it’s ostensibly retelling.
Mank is essentially Shakespeare in Love aimed at cinephiles rather than theater buffs. We see the actions of men like Hearst and Mayer and their various lieutenants and henchmen that were transfigured into Charles Foster Kane, his business manager, and the others that circumnavigated his life. We see Mank’s relationship with Marion Davies and how it influences the depiction of Susan Alexander. We see plenty of more specific moments like grand guignol soirees or stray lines that make their way into the finished product.
At times it veers on the cheesy or obvious. Outside of a few significant moments (mostly Mank’s bottle rolling out of his hand the way Kane’s snowglobe did), David Fincher never gets too cute with these parallels. But they’re also not necessarily interesting either, with the film’s take on Hearst, Davies, and Mayer, far less engrossing than that of Mank himself.
The closest this movie comes to a hook is the notion that the truth is worse than fiction, that Charles Foster Kane was rife with tragedy and lost ideals and other humanizing qualities that the real movers and shakers he and his coterie were based on lacked. Hollywood schmaltz and poetic license, in the Finchers’ tale, elevated them to a level of decency they didn’t deserve. And at the same time, Mank suggests its title character underserved Citizen Kane’s leading lady, with the real figure even more sympathetic, but also sharper and more adept, than her celluloid counterpart. The problem is that, for a film that makes such pains to underscore that Citizen Kane was art that didn’t talk down to its audience or hold its hand, the signature scene of Mank features a seemingly endless monologue from the eponymous screenwriter where he all but announces all of this and how he’ll inject it into Welles’s famous picture, to the people he’ll use for his roman a clef. There is zero subtlety to it, or much of anything in the picture, just a thundering confirmation of how and why Mr. Mankewicz decided to go after Hearst in his screenplay.
At least Fincher the Younger pays some nice tribute to Citizen Kane in style and approach. Beyond the black and white color-grading, the look and feel of the film aims to capture that 1940s aesthetic and tone. True to the inspiration, Mank also uses a non-linear approach, jumping between past that informs the present. Even the sound design clearly took some pain to recreate a classic vibe. At times, it feels more like a gimmick than an organic extension of the story, but its fidelity is impressive, and it’s a nice homage the cinematic classic.
The Finchers argue that Mankiewicz deserves more credit for that classic, but doesn’t make him all that engrossing as a central figure. The Mank of the film that bears his name is a drunk and degenerate gambler who can spin a bon mot and may be hiding a heart of gold. But his witticisms feel stock and over-packed into the film’s banter, and the beats he hits over the course of the movie make him scan as a standard issue “difficult man.” It’s no one’s fault that the self-destructive genius whose principles and methods are both his salvation and his downfall has become such a stock trope in the modern day. But it leaves the character of Mankiewicz, and Gary Oldman’s able but familiar performance of him, far less memorable or reakrable than the film needs them to be.
Despite that, Mank is yet another movie about movie-making, slickly produced with awards-calibrated performances and a message about paying tribute to the crafters of dreams while slating the money men who fund them. It’s sure to clean-up on that basis alone. (And it would be especially ironic if it managed to win more Oscars than Citizen Kane itself.) Beyond that, it juggles a parallel story with well-done tributes to the era it represents and creditable nods to its hallowed forebear. The ingredients are there, not just for an Academy crowd-pleaser, but for a solid film.
Mank just never rises above that. Citizen Kane bent and broke the truth as much, if not more than this film does, but got at a more essential humanity and even profundity in what it made out of the pieces. The best you can say for its “making of” successor is that it has the boldness to say the inspirations and creation of that seminal filmic work were much uglier and lacking in those qualities than Welles’s movie might suggest. But for a movie devoted to one of cinema’s great groundbreaking works, it does so in a surprisingly rote fashion.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-02-07T05:26:26Z
[6.9/10] I am always fascinated by movies whose themes and ideas are recursive. That is to say, I’m intrigued when whatever a movie is trying to say can also be said about the movie. Ironically for Mank, a great example of this is Saving Mr. Banks, a 2013 film about the making of Mary Poppins. It stands for the idea that film and fiction can be used to remember the best parts of the people we love and scrub away the bad parts, which the 1960s period does for none other than Walt Disney.
Mank is a film about glorifying writers, about the way their long-nursed grudges and half-truths and personal peccadillos end up making it into their scripts, no matter how abstracted or generalized those elements may become in translation. It features its eponymous scribe punishing the likes of William Randolph Hearst and Louis B. Mayer for their misdeeds by spinning them in a particular light in his draft.
It’s not hard to see screenwriter Jack Fincher (late father of director David), himself a journalist-turned-screenwriter like the title character, playing with the truth of the California gubernatorial election, the writing of Citizen Kane, and Herman J. Mankiewicz’s role in both to make his own point about screenwriters being unsung and of a moral (or at least artistic) bankruptcy among the bigwigs who kick the humble scripturients around.
The catch is that, whoever deserves credit for the writing (and film historians have concluded that Orson Welles’s contributions were numerous, and potentially superseding), the results were that Citizen Kane is a masterpiece. Whatever concomitant beefs with Hollywood or politicking or simple storytelling Mr. Fincher has, the result is a film that’s perfectly fine, but that isn’t within bottle-throwing distance of the movie whose history it’s ostensibly retelling.
Mank is essentially Shakespeare in Love aimed at cinephiles rather than theater buffs. We see the actions of men like Hearst and Mayer and their various lieutenants and henchmen that were transfigured into Charles Foster Kane, his business manager, and the others that circumnavigated his life. We see Mank’s relationship with Marion Davies and how it influences the depiction of Susan Alexander. We see plenty of more specific moments like grand guignol soirees or stray lines that make their way into the finished product.
At times it veers on the cheesy or obvious. Outside of a few significant moments (mostly Mank’s bottle rolling out of his hand the way Kane’s snowglobe did), David Fincher never gets too cute with these parallels. But they’re also not necessarily interesting either, with the film’s take on Hearst, Davies, and Mayer, far less engrossing than that of Mank himself.
The closest this movie comes to a hook is the notion that the truth is worse than fiction, that Charles Foster Kane was rife with tragedy and lost ideals and other humanizing qualities that the real movers and shakers he and his coterie were based on lacked. Hollywood schmaltz and poetic license, in the Finchers’ tale, elevated them to a level of decency they didn’t deserve. And at the same time, Mank suggests its title character underserved Citizen Kane’s leading lady, with the real figure even more sympathetic, but also sharper and more adept, than her celluloid counterpart.
The problem is that, for a film that makes such pains to underscore that Citizen Kane was art that didn’t talk down to its audience or hold its hand, the signature scene of Mank features a seemingly endless monologue from the eponymous screenwriter where he all but announces all of this and how he’ll inject it into Welles’s famous picture, to the people he’ll use for his roman a clef. There is zero subtlety to it, or much of anything in the picture, just a thundering confirmation of how and why Mr. Mankewicz decided to go after Hearst in his screenplay.
At least Fincher the Younger pays some nice tribute to Citizen Kane in style and approach. Beyond the black and white color-grading, the look and feel of the film aims to capture that 1940s aesthetic and tone. True to the inspiration, Mank also uses a non-linear approach, jumping between past that informs the present. Even the sound design clearly took some pain to recreate a classic vibe. At times, it feels more like a gimmick than an organic extension of the story, but its fidelity is impressive, and it’s a nice homage the cinematic classic.
The Finchers argue that Mankiewicz deserves more credit for that classic, but doesn’t make him all that engrossing as a central figure. The Mank of the film that bears his name is a drunk and degenerate gambler who can spin a bon mot and may be hiding a heart of gold. But his witticisms feel stock and over-packed into the film’s banter, and the beats he hits over the course of the movie make him scan as a standard issue “difficult man.” It’s no one’s fault that the self-destructive genius whose principles and methods are both his salvation and his downfall has become such a stock trope in the modern day. But it leaves the character of Mankiewicz, and Gary Oldman’s able but familiar performance of him, far less memorable or reakrable than the film needs them to be.
Despite that, Mank is yet another movie about movie-making, slickly produced with awards-calibrated performances and a message about paying tribute to the crafters of dreams while slating the money men who fund them. It’s sure to clean-up on that basis alone. (And it would be especially ironic if it managed to win more Oscars than Citizen Kane itself.) Beyond that, it juggles a parallel story with well-done tributes to the era it represents and creditable nods to its hallowed forebear. The ingredients are there, not just for an Academy crowd-pleaser, but for a solid film.
Mank just never rises above that. Citizen Kane bent and broke the truth as much, if not more than this film does, but got at a more essential humanity and even profundity in what it made out of the pieces. The best you can say for its “making of” successor is that it has the boldness to say the inspirations and creation of that seminal filmic work were much uglier and lacking in those qualities than Welles’s movie might suggest. But for a movie devoted to one of cinema’s great groundbreaking works, it does so in a surprisingly rote fashion.