While it has admittedly been more than half a decade since
his last film, Gone Girl, came out in 2014, the arrival of a new David
Fincher feature is always guaranteed to be a big deal for the film fan
community. After all, that’s simply what’s to be expected when you’re talking
about a filmmaker who’s been responsible for some of the most critically
acclaimed films of the past few decades such as Fight Club, Se7en,
and The Social Network. But as for his newest feature, Mank, Fincher
has a considerably personal connection to this screenplay since it was written
by none other than his father, Jack Fincher. A biopic that explores
screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s experiences while developing the screenplay
for Orson Welles’ 1941 feature Citizen Kane (AKA the film that is widely
regarded as the ‘greatest film ever made’), David Fincher had originally planned
on making it after finishing his work on 1997’s The Game. Unfortunately,
those initial plans (which would’ve starred Kevin Spacey (pre-scandal, of
course…) as Mankiewicz and Jodie Foster as Hollywood starlet Marion Davies) weren’t
able to come to fruition due to Polygram, the studio that Fincher worked with
on The Game, being uneasy about his intent to shoot the film in
black-and-white. And if that weren’t enough, Jack Fincher sadly wouldn’t live
to see his script get made as he died on April 10th, 2003 after a
yearlong bout with cancer. But now, fresh off his work on the second season of the
crime thriller series Mindhunter, David Fincher has finally brought his
father’s magnum opus to life as the latest Netflix original release. Simply
put, it’s a film that will certainly attract some major attention during awards
season; granted, I don’t think that it’s Fincher’s ‘best’ film, but at the same
time, it gives you everything that you’ve come to expect from one of the
industry’s most revered filmmakers.
The year is 1940 and prestigious screenwriter Herman J.
Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) has just begun working on his next project. Despite recently
suffering a leg injury in a car crash that leaves him almost entirely
bedridden, he is approached by Orson Welles (Tom Burke) to write the screenplay
for his first feature film with RKO Pictures, who have given him full creative
control over the project. Due to his injury, Mankiewicz is brought to a secluded
ranch in Victorville, California where he can both rest up and write the
screenplay at a location that thoroughly bans alcohol, which is an important
thing for Mankiewicz since he regularly suffers from an addiction to it.
Despite this, however, Mankiewicz soon finds himself slipping back into his old
habits, which is a problem that both Welles’ producer John Houseman (Sam
Troughton) and Mankiewicz’s secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Collins) must deal
with. And to make matters worse, Mankiewicz then becomes embroiled in some
major scandals over the content in the screenplay (namely, the potentially
hostile reactions from those who the characters are ostensibly modeled after),
which gets to the point where he and Welles get into some heated arguments over
who should receive the screenwriting credit. While all this is going on, the
film also delves into some key moments from Mankiewicz’s past such as the conflict
of integrity that emerged between him and his superiors at MGM, founder Louis
B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) and executive Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley)
over their substantial involvement in the 1934 election for the Governor of
California. And then, of course, there’s also the matter of his tense
relationship with the country’s most prominent media tycoon, William Randolph
Hearst (Charles Dance), for whom the main character of Citizen Kane,
Charles Foster Kane, is clearly based on.
As I noted back in the intro, Fincher’s insistence on
shooting this film in black-and-white to honor Citizen Kane’s
cinematography was the main reason why he was never able to get it made when he
originally wanted to. Now that the film has finally come out, it’s safe to say
that this goal of his was completely worth it in the end because this film’s cinematography
(done by Erik Messerschmidt, who worked with Fincher on Mindhunter) is
fantastic. The film’s amazing technical merits don’t stop there, however, as
Fincher and his team go above and beyond to make it look and feel like a
classic 40’s picture. Whether it’s the frequent appearances of film projection cue
marks (or, as another Fincher film called them, ‘cigarette burns’) or Fincher’s
go-to composers, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, creating a more classical score
rather than their usual electronic pieces, Mank is a figurative and
literal ‘period piece’. And overall, a lot of this does make up for some of the
film’s narrative shortcomings; namely, the fact that its proceedings can often
feel a bit dry. It is worth noting that the film’s plot is largely inspired by
one of the most controversial pieces in the history of film criticism, Raising
Kane, a 1971 essay written by Pauline Kael that argued that Herman J.
Mankiewicz was solely responsible for Citizen Kane’s script. However,
Kael’s arguments have since been discredited by several sources, and to this
film’s credit, Fincher and producer Eric Roth did make some changes to his dad’s
script so that it doesn’t completely vilify Orson Welles. Still, because the
film focuses so much on Mankiewicz’s efforts to write the script, it feels like
we’re not getting the whole story behind everything that went into the film’s
inception, like how the lives of folks like William Randolph Hearst and Marion
Davies were impacted by them being the inspiration for the film’s characters.
Granted, it goes without saying that this is not a film
about the making of Citizen Kane. Instead, it’s about the man who went
through hell and high water to bring Orson Welles’ masterpiece to life, and with
that in mind, the film does get its points across on everything that ultimately
made Herman J. Mankiewicz a tragic figure. But because of the lack of some key bits
of context regarding Citizen Kane’s impact, some of the film’s messages end
up feeling rather muddled since they aren’t quite fully articulated. That said,
though, I will give the film credit in that one of its key subplots in which
Mankiewicz uncovers a conspiracy where his superiors are filming bits of propaganda
to hinder their political opponent… is scarily relevant. And, of course, Mank’s
biggest selling point is that it’s very much an ‘actor’s showcase’ feature
headlined by Gary Oldman who, as to be expected, is outstanding in the title
role as he brilliantly encapsulates Mankiewicz’s persona as someone who can be
both the smartest person in the room and one whose life and reputation ends up
being tragically undone by his raging alcoholism. He’s then backed by a pair of
excellent performances from Amanda Seyfried and Lily Collins as the film’s
female leads, Marion Davies and Rita Alexander. While the film largely focuses
on Mankiewicz, both Seyfried and Collins manage to hold their own against Oldman,
namely by being some of the only people who can reasonably put up with Mankiewicz’s
drunken antics. After that, there are plenty of strong performances from the
rest of the film’s supporting cast, including Arliss Howard as the conniving
Louis B. Mayer and Tom Pelphrey as Mankiewicz’s more level-headed brother Joseph.
Finally, while he’s not in the film that much (which ties into the issue of the
film not properly elaborating on Hearst’s influence on Citizen Kane), Charles
Dance makes the most of his limited screen-time as the emotionally composed but
utterly imposing media tycoon.
Now despite some of the things that I’ve said in this
review, I want to make it clear that I don’t ‘dislike’ this film. David Fincher’s
Mank is a well-directed and terrifically acted biopic that thoroughly succeeds
in being an earnest but not overly sentimental tribute to classic Hollywood. On
the surface, it’s easy to see what this film is primarily trying to do; namely,
honoring the legacy of Herman J. Mankiewicz, a man who, despite his many flaws,
was clearly ahead of his time as a writer. However, as noble as its intentions
are, the film doesn’t exactly do the story behind the conception of the ‘greatest
film of all-time’ justice. Overall, it feels like an incomplete retelling of
this important moment in cinematic history since it’s almost entirely focused on
Mankiewicz’s side of the story. And while it does boast some good messages such
as the importance of integrity and giving credit where credit’s due, the lack
of proper subtext results in the impact of these themes not being as effective
as the film wants them to be to the point where the whole film ends up being emotionally
empty. It’s not a dull watch, by any means, but despite how fully admirable it
is that David Fincher wanted to stay as true to his dad’s original script as he
possibly could, it really could’ve benefitted from some additional rewrites
(and not just the edits made by Fincher and Eric Roth that I mentioned
earlier). Still, while its dry proceedings may prove to be a bit much for
casual viewers, Mank is a wholly impressive technical achievement that
feels like it was lifted directly from the cinematic era in which it takes
place. For fans of David Fincher, this is obviously an absolute must-watch as it
dutifully upholds his distinguished track record as a director despite its flaws.
At the same time, though, those flaws are the main reason why I wouldn’t
necessarily call this one of the best films of the year.
Rating: 4/5
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