Netflix Prestige Presentations: A Review of Mank

 directed by David Fincher

written by Jack Fincher

As I write this, the Academy Awards for 2021 have just been handed out, and while David Fincher's Mank led the pack with 10 nominations, it only walked away with some technical awards, with the big winner of the night being Chloe Zhao's Nomadland.  I haven't seen Nomadland, not having Disney+, so I couldn't possibly comment on whether or not it deserved its win, but having seen Mank it is with some confidence that I can say that it would not have been a worthy Best Picture winner. It is far from David Fincher's best and I think it's fair to say that it was not the year's best film, either. 

Mank is the dramatization of the true story of the late screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, played in the film by previous Oscar-winner Gary Oldman. More specifically, the film focuses on Mank's journey towards writing the film that came to define his career, the late Orson Welles' magnum opus Citizen Kane. It takes place in two different time periods: the first period, or the "present day" is the 60 days in 1940 in which Mank, in a secluded cottage while convalescing from a car accident, writes the script for Citizen Kane with the assistance of typewriter Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), and under the watchful eye of nurse Frieda (Monika Gossmann) and producer John Houseman (Sam Troughton), while the second period or the "past" spans the years 1934 to 1937, in which the events play out in Mank's career with studio Metro Goldwyn Mayer which ultimately inspire him to write the script for Kane, which is a thinly-veiled reference to media mogul William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance).

In the present day, Mank feels the pressure early on when Welles (Tom Burke) cuts his initial 90-day deadline to 60 days. Welles removes all distractions, spiking Mank's alcohol, to which he is hopelessly addicted, with a sedative and even keeping him separate from his wife Sara (Tuppence Middleton). These safeguards notwithstanding, the 60 days prove to be a hair-raising experience for all involved.  

In the part of the movie set in his past, Mank, then one of the leading lights at MGM, is basically at the height of his screenwriting career, enjoying the trust of MGM honchos Louis Mayer (Arliss Howard) and Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley) and schmoozing with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfriend).  At first, Mank tries to ignore his boss's seeming lack of compassion when Mayer gives most studio employees a 50% pay cut, but when progressive Democrat Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye) runs against Republican Frank Merrier, Thalberg and Mayer, who support the Republican, do the unthinkable to help him win.  When he finds out who bankrolled this shameful abuse of the studio's talents, Mank is set on his path to writing Citizen Kane. 

There are creative choices I don't really agree with in this film, like the fact that Mank's dispute with Orson Welles over screenwriting credit is reduced to an argument between them in the dying minutes of the film, and what amounts to a footnote in the story. I get, though that David Fincher, working from a script from his late father Jack, wanted to focus on Mank's battle with his studio after a really terrible stunt they pulled in support of a politician, and on how he came to train his sights on Hearst, a powerful man who had every means at his disposal to ruin him. 

The problem with the Mank/Hearst feud as presented in the film is that, no matter how much Fincher wants to convince the audience of how betrayed Mank feels by his friend Hearst, there is little to no connection established between Mank and Hearst up until the great big exposition dump Mank makes when he gatecrashes Hearst's party and makes a drunken speech.  He basically tells the audience why he feels betrayed by Hearst, even though, for the uninitiated--like myself--who know nothing of Hearst, there is nothing in the film's narrative that even suggests any sort of deep relationship between them that would be undermined by betrayal. Heck, Mank doesn't even share more than a few lines of dialogue with Hearst all throughout the movie before that pivotal end point, with the closest thing to an onscreen connection between them being Mank's platonic relationship with Davies. 

It's genuinely disappointing that someone as consummately professional as David Fincher would try to get the audience to buy into a "shocker" that he didn't earn. Fincher structures the narrative as a kind of mystery, asking the audience the question: what would get a writer like Mank, who had the world as his oyster, to take on one of the most powerful men in America? The revelation, for all of the flourish that Fincher attempts to attach to it, lands with an unfortunate thud.

One shining light of this film, though, is Gary Oldman, who pours his heart into his performance, even though at 61 he looked a bit strange playing a 43-year-old, even though the fortysomething in question was an alcoholic. It didn't help that Fincher surrounded Oldman with mostly appropriately-aged actors as Mank's peers, like his wife and brother.  To his credit, Oldman still made it work, and in the end it was Fincher, with his unfortunate narrative choices, who let him down. 
  

7/10

Seen on Netflix: A Review of Love and Monsters

 directed by Michael Matthews

writteny by Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson

Like News of the World, this isn't a Netflix film but one produced by a "traditional" studio (in this case Paramount Pictures) which received a limited release last year but which, due to the pandemic, mainly saw release through streaming platforms, which in our territory means Netflix. 

Love and Monsters is yet another apocalypse movie, albeit this time with a comedic twist and with a slightly different take on the subject; this time humans haven't been overrun by a zombie plague but have, instead, been decimated to the point of near annihilation by cold-blooded creatures like reptiles, amphibians and insects of every size and shape, all of which have mutated into giants as a result of chemical fallout from missiles that were  fired at an asteroid which almost destroyed the Earth.

Joel Dawson (Dylan O'Brien, no stranger to apocalyptic wastelands) has, following this cataclysmic event in which giant frogs, lizards and insects basically took over the world and drove humans underground, lived in an underground bunker in the last seven years with his "colony" a group of strapping young men and women---all of whom have managed to romantically couple, leaving him the odd-man out. On top of this, the trauma of losing his parents has left Joel prone to freezing in the face of peril, which means that rather than go out and fight the monsters with his fellow survivors, he's been the designated cook for seven years.

Through all of this, though, one thought keeps him going: the memory of his girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick) from whom he was separated just before the world as he knew it ended and whom he has finally reconnected with after years of searching for her on the radio. When a catastrophic invasion by a giant ant results in the death of one of his fellow colony members, Joel realizes he doesn't want to die alone, and so against everyone's advice, he takes a backpack, a makeshift crossbow and heads for Amy's colony, an 85-mile, seven-day trek across giant-monster-infested territory.  Along the way, he makes friends with a dog named Boy, and a tough-as-nails pair of survivors in fifty/sixtysomething Clyde (Michael Rooker) and eight-year-old Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt). Will he make it to Aimee...or even survive?

As apocalyptic films go, this one is more of a Shaun of the Dead than a Dawn of the Dead, so even though it borrows heavily from a lot of the really grim movies in the genre, like I Am Legend which also featured a character traveling with a dog, and The Mist, which also featured horrific giant monsters instead of the usual zombies, to name but a few, it manages a comedic tone that actually works in spite of the traditionally dark setting. It's an ultimately inconsequential movie, but that may be exactly what we need in times like these. 

It helps that O'Brien successfully makes the transition from his action-drama days of The Maze Runner trilogy to action-comedy.  His awkward dork Joel is a pretty big departure from his highly-capable lead Thomas from the older films, but O'Brien sells the character well. It also helps that he has a good supporting cast to play off of, particularly Rooker, Greenblatt (whom many viewers may recognize as young Gamora from Avengers: Infinity War) and Dodge, the supremely expressive dog who plays Boy. 

It also helps that, even on a shoestring budget of USD30 million, the filmmakers have managed to create a film that is wonderfully atmospheric, with the wilds of Australia's Gold Coast and other locations standing in for the wastelands of California.  So effective is the art direction in terms of establishing the post-apocalyptic vibe that even though the computer-generated monsters are relatively few and far between, each appearance makes an impact.  It's also worth noting that even in spite of a relatively small budget, the film features some genuinely impressive computer-generated, super-sized critters to terrorize our hero.

It's hardly a compelling commentary on the human condition and certainly not meant to be a life-changing experience, notwithstanding a slightly hokey speech at around the end of the film, but as movies to enjoy in the midst of the pandemic go, it feels like just what the doctor ordered.

8.5/10