MANK (2020)
REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER
Well, it looks ravishing. And everybody is excellent in it. And the Rezner & Ross score perfectly combines jazzy urgency with the menace of Hermann. So, why is it a little dull?
I wondered if it was because David Fincher's father wrote the screenplay a long time back, before everybody in Hollywood was using Save The Cat as a structural template. I'm not being too serious about this, but was Fincher Sr aware of the rules of narrative tension?
Like a string of pearls worn by Marion Davies, the film is composed of a row of scenes, all nicely written and beautifully shot.
Two timelines vie for our attention and they add to each other effectively as they progress: one showing events in the 1930s, which depict Mankiewicz's ongoing beef with William Randolph Hearst and Louis B Mayer; the other in 1940 with Mank laid up in bed with an injured leg, washed up and alcoholic, but still somehow brilliant, writing the great epic screenplay for Orson Welles and John Houseman that would become CITIZEN KANE.
The film recreates Hollywood from the period as a gorgeous artefact, like Ryan Murphy's recent HOLLYWOOD series, but this is more serious and so opts for monochrome noir cinematography, with fake cigarette burns at the "end" of every would-be reel.
Part of the problem might be that Mank's only real adversary is himself. He seems full of self-loathing... a problem faced by self-pitying, super-intelligent people forced to write screenplays for populist movies for lots of money during a depression, when they should be destitute and tackling the Great American Novel. This is a romanticised view of screenwriting and pays no heed to the honour of writing and working on such films as THE WIZARD OF OZ and the early Marx Brothers movies (for which Mank did not receive screenwriter credits). This idealistic notion of writing dusty worthwhile novels instead of tawdry films is dealt with beautifully in Preston Sturges' masterpiece, SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS. If only Mankiewicz had taken heed of that film. He might have been saved from himself.
There is much to admire in MANK. Tom Pelphrey's performance as his brother, Joseph, who would go on to become a successful producer, director and the screenwriter of ALL ABOUT EVE. (Pelphrey is one of my favourite actors... watch how different he is in BANSHEE, IRON FIST and now this.)
Amanda Seyfried is excellent and luminous as Marion Davies. The luminosity made real on screen by Erik Messerschmidt's photography. Davies' relationship with Mank is nicely explored, a platonic affair with just the right amount of tease and flirtation.
Charles Dance is stoic and powerful as Hearst; Tom Burke is petulant and charming as Welles; Arliss Howard is pent-up and excellent as a manipulative Louis B Mayer... all are given great roles by Fincher Sr's work.
And then there is Oldman. He is exceptional. Coquettish and arrogant, world-weary, overweight, damaged, beset by the curse of being "the smartest man in the room" and keen to drown himself in alcohol. If the gambling debts don't get him first. The poor thing, Hollywood at his feet and a loyal, loving wife (played with forbearance and grace by Tuppence Middleton), who forgives him far too much.
Watch Oldman, Seyfried, Howard and Dance in the scene at Hearst Castle, where a drunken Mank commits a self-inflicted career-suicide.
One issue the film draws well is its portrayal of Mayer and Irving Thalberg's battle against the socialist writer and politician, Upton Sinclair. Mank sides with Sinclair, and the arguments and disagreements he gets into with the studio powers are well-depicted and enlightening.
I liked the fact that a couple of scenes in the third act, notably an explosive one with Welles, tackle the issue of Mank taking a screenwriter credit on Kane. To do so, might kill his relationship with Marion and almost certainly cut off his access to power; but Mank decides to take the credit for what friends and family say is his greatest work. The credit is there for all to see at the end of CITIZEN KANE, shared with Orson Welles. That sharing became the source of rancour between the men and they never worked with each other again.
Making a film about the writing and creation of CITIZEN KANE is liking taking a stand on the assassination of JFK. There are too many theories and opinions, and who really knows who did what? For sure, Welles directed a film that changed cinema and the language of movie-making. Does that make him a writer? The Camera-Stylo school of thought (as espoused in Cahiers du Cinema over a decade later) says it does. Thus the auteur theory exerted its dull grip.
In the early 70s, influential film critic Pauline Kael wrote an article, Raising Kane, in which she claimed Welles had stolen too much screenplay credit from Mankiewicz. It overturned the prevailing auteurist idea that wunderkind Welles was solely responsible for the masterpiece... film-maker Peter Bogdanovich, who had become a friend of Welles, objected, and the battle began. It's a battle that still goes on today on most films, where screenwriters are usually forgotten about and a movie is credited to its director as though it hadn't been dreamed up by a writer, shot by a cinematographer, or saved in the edit suite by an editor. Fincher Sr's screenplay springs from Kael's essay and at least reminds us that the screenwriter exists.
In summary, MANK looks like a great film and it carries great performances; it may win Oscars; it's the kind of film critics like to write about; film buffs discuss; and Hollywood likes to celebrate because it glamorises its past. There is much in it to enjoy, but it often feels languid, like Mank in his sick bed, and it may be only a good film, and I could not blame anybody who did not stick with it through to the end.