‘Mank’ tanks
I couldn’t help but be reminded of the old saying, “never meet your heroes” after seeing director David Fincher’s new film Mank, starring Gary Oldman as Herman J. Mankiewicz, a.k.a. the guy who wrote Citizen Kane; maybe you’ve heard of it. And maybe, like a lot of people, Citizen Kane is your favorite movie. It’s certainly maintained a stranglehold at the very tip-top of a boatload of lists from reputable places that make lists from all around the world. I won’t argue that it’s a great film. I’ve seen it multiple times and it’s damn near a Wonder of the World that scrappy, young, smart-ass Orson Welles pulled off such a cinematic masterpiece at the tender age of 25 — or at least it should be, right?
This leads me back to that hard-hitting, gut-punch of an opener that I’m sure will have cineASSES ready to chuck hand-grenades at me after reading this because I’ll have given something like, oh, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue more stars than Mank. Chill out, nerds, that’s a whole ‘nother ball park.
All you need to know about Mank, and about all you’ll even find out after sitting through the incessant dialogue for two hours and 11 minutes, is that it’s the story of how screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz wrote, arguably, the greatest movie ever made. Told through a framing story that sees a boozed up Mank nursing a broken leg after a car accident, his real-life influences that reveal what eventually become Citizen Kane unfold in a series of flashbacks where we’re all supposed to look at each other in a state of fascination and say, “That’s where that came from.” If only it were that interesting.
But the crime of boredom is the least of this movie’s problems, because Fincher falls into the annoying habit of making sure to boop the classic Hollywood era right square on the nose any chance he gets. From David O. Selznick to Louis B. Mayer, to the most obnoxious instance, Josef von Sternberg, who is literally just standing in a room with a bunch of writers and someone says something like, “Hi-ya, Mank, have you met our new guy Joe Stoinboig?” — Fincher checks the boxes by letting us know that all the name Hollywood people of the era are in the same room.
On the other hand, I could watch Gary Oldman star as a potted plant reading the phone book in a cancer drama called Grandma’s Gone to Jesus. The man would figure out some way to grow leaves and shape himself into a Chia Pet and literally disappear into the part. And in Mank, Oldman’s performance is the reason to even bother. Even if all he’s doing — and it is all he’s doing — is oozing out witty barbs that begin and end conversations that always leave everyone else in the scene smiling and shaking their heads saying, “Mank, you rascal,” the man is 100 percent believable for the entire film.
For the most part, this meandering true-tale of Hollywood’s golden era, marking a key moment in cinema history is just downright boring. Scene after scene of Hollywood’s Who’s-Whos sitting in rooms and talking. And not just regular talking, but like in an Aaron Sorkin imitation kind of talking. I won’t speak ill of the dead, so I’ll leave the late screenwriter Jack Fincher — also David’s father — out of this, and chalk it up to the younger Fincher working his Sorkin chops. I don’t like Aaron Sorkin stuff when it’s actually Aaron Sorkin, and I sure don’t like it when it wants to be Aaron Sorkin. It’s snotty and it sounds like dialogue vomit that nobody can follow.
The film climaxes — if you can even call it that — at a dinner party in the Hearst Castle after Mank goes on for about 10 minutes or so in a drunken monologue that ends in a humiliating pile of vomit; not unlike my expectations for this film. And of course we know the rest of the story because Citizen Kane was made, Mank got his screen credit, and he won an Oscar.
After beating up on this movie for seven paragraphs, I can finally tell you what is interesting about it. Fincher went to great lengths to make sure this thing felt like it was found in an old UCLA archive, according to the film’s IMDB Trivia section. I can certainly say, Mission Accomplished, Dave. The first thing I noticed was the mono sound, and pay attention and you’ll notice several scenes where Fincher replicates rear-projection. Pretty cool but a little distracting. I think Fincher was aiming more for aesthetic than an entertaining movie. He’s been guilty of this before; see also The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and probably Panic Room.
Mank is currently streaming on Netflix, and for anyone who says to hell with quarantining, it’s also showing in select theaters across the US. I was lucky enough to see this at my local theater — socially distanced, of course; with a mask, of course — and I don’t remember the last time I had an opportunity to see a film in black and white on a 40 foot screen. If you’ve not done that, I highly recommend it.
And as much detail and effort that was clearly put in to accomplishing this heavily stylized aesthetic for such a terribly boring film, it seems like Fincher just wanted to play around in the classic Hollywood era. We know Fincher can spin a helluva film noir yarn, and an original story told with the skill executed in Mank could have been a lot of fun. But follow that argument all the way to its bitter, truthful end and you could easily say to yourself, “I’ll just watch Citizen Kane instead.”
Two and a half stars.
