Mank Review

Given the cinematic importance of Citizen Kane, a film about how it was written undoubtedly makes sense. Armed with a witty trailer, strong cast, and 10 Oscar nominations, I settled down to enjoy a tongue-in-cheek rendition of past events.

Unfortunately, Mank didn't deliver. It clearly tries to be a stylistic piece, over-the-top yet believable, in a similar vein to La La Land, The Artist, or even a Wes Anderson film. But because it doesn't commit enough to the style, doesn't go far enough into the larger-than-life viewpoint, it just comes across as superficial and without a ring of truth. The writing is downright bad at times, with characters having inconsistent speech patterns and saying things that even in 1941 would have sounded stilted. The storytelling is very obviously paying homage to Citizen Kane with its narrative jumping through time, the story half told in flashbacks, but unlike the film it tries to emulate, the result is confusing. Also, the choice of scenes to depict in the flashbacks is not always relevant; why am I meant to care that a character we barely know commits suicide, supposedly for political reasons, even though we never really see their inner struggle?

Speaking of inner struggles, I will let you in on a secret: the main character doesn't seem to have any. The film's tone wants us to like Mank despite his flaws and see him as a loveable rake but all I got was a self-destructive alcoholic who managed to co-write one good thing his whole life despite himself. What we see is a lazy man who spends his workday betting on mundane games, treats his wife as an afterthought and his brother as lesser (curiously, the real Joe Mankiewicz's accomplishments far outshine his big brother's). Why am I meant to care about such a person? At no point do we feel he has a change of heart or epiphany, and there is no moment of contrition nor consequences. As for the hero-perspective, that he singlehandedly wrote this seminal piece of movie history and big bad Orson Welles didn't want to share credit, it's a viewpoint that has been much refuted and contradicted by the vast majority of the cinema community (people who's knowledge and opinion I trust much more than David Fincher's father, who wrote this script).

Not that the other characters fare any better. His wife is the perfect example of lazy writing, supposedly full of sass and humour but actually just accepting a life as a glorified housekeeper to her husband without any real objections. Rita, the nurse, has zero personal characteristics and is saddled with a backstory that failed to make me care even in the slightest. As for all the big cinema kahunas, they feel like stereotypes and caricatures, none of them having any real depth.

Getting into the technical side of the movie, I quite appreciate what was attempted but, unlike the Academy, I don't think it was at all accomplished. Let's take the cinematography: shot in black and white, the filmmakers wanted to achieve that lovely softness that movies from the 30s and 40s had so they decreased the resolution in post-production. However, instead of that gorgeous warm look, all they managed to get was an out-of-focus film that had me squinting half the time. As for the lighting...let me take a breath so I don't rant here! Instead of the dramatic light play that has such an important role in the original, here we just have a dark movie, where day and night both somehow come across as fake. I didn't notice all the work that went into the sound production (possibly due to watching it on a tv rather than a theatre) but the soundtrack certainly jumped out, albeit for all the wrong reasons. I am a huge fan of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, many of their previous soundtracks making my top-played list. And I actually really enjoyed the music as standalone. However, it had no bearing at all with the action and was almost continuous, making it exhausting to hear. This is a director fault, not composer. Music in films is there to either create ambience or give insight into the emotions of a given scene, in my opinion; here it was just like a radio turned on in the background, relentless and oblivious to what's happening.

Now, with bad writing and bad tech, one would at least hope the acting would save this, right? Well, alas, not really. Amanda Seyfried is indeed very good, a nomination I can get behind. But everyone else ranges from forgettable to actively bad. Wasn't Lily Collins born in the UK? Then why is her British accent atrocious?? Though at least it's consistent in its badness, unlike Gary Oldman's which flips from one side of the pond to the other, sometimes mid-sentence. As for the rest of his acting...eh, not worthy of any attention, as far as I'm concerned. And I question the choice of casting, or at least the decision not to use prosthetics. When Mank's age is mentioned as being 42...well, let's just say that was the only belly-laugh the movie elicited. Even though I could barely make out his face thanks to the terrible cinematography choices, he still wasn't believable as 20 years younger than the actor. Shame on you, David Fincher, for not casting someone else. There's even a performer I actually felt sorry for in all this: Charles Dance. He has proven himself to be formidable and the role had so much potential (I mean, William Randolph Hearst is the reason for Citizen Kane's existence in the first place!) but was given absolutely nothing to work with; very few scenes, not much dialogue, and zero character development or even insight make the casting seem like a waste.

I could go on. I could mention how the script assumes we know the players in a gubernatorial race in the 30s as well as, say, a presidential one in the 2000s, making the subplot difficult to follow. How the motivations we're shown for Mank's turning on WRH are flimsy at best. Or how the tone often borders on sickly sweet for no discernible reason. But I'll end by calling this out as a Hollywood self-indulgence, a film about films aimed at those in the biz that leaves the rest of us feeling locked out of the punchline. David Fincher should know better.

Conclusion: Eh, take it or leave it [what's this?]

Mank came out in 2020.