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
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