1930s Hollywood is reevaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane.
- Released: 2020-11-13
- Runtime: 132 minutes
- Genre: Drama, History
- Stars: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Arliss Howard, Tom Pelphrey, Sam Troughton, Ferdinand Kingsley, Tuppence Middleton, Tom Burke, Joseph Cross, Jamie McShane, Toby Leonard Moore, Monika Gossmann, Charles Dance, Jack Romano, Adam Shapiro, John Churchill, Jeff Harms, Derek Petropolis, Sean Persaud, Paul Fox, Tom Simmons, Nick Job, Colin Ward, Cooper Tomlinson, Julie Collis, Arlo Mertz, Craig Welzbacher, Jessie Cohen, Desiree Louise, Amie Farrell, Ian Boyd, Jay Villwock, Lou George, John Lee Ames, Bill Nye, Richmond Arquette, David Lee Smith, Mario Di Donato, James Patrick Duffy, Flo Lawrence, Sebastian Faure, Randy Davison, Christian Prentice, Leven Rambin, Rick Pasqualone, Gary Teitelbaum, Eden Wattez, Roslyn Cohn, Mark Fite, John Patrick Jordan, Ben Mankiewicz, Natalie Denise Sperl, Brian Michael Jones, Camille Montgomery, Craig Robert Young, Paul Carafotes, Anne Beyer, Joey Hagler, Sean Donnellan, Stewart Skelton, Malachi Rivers, Keith Barber, Kaytlin Borgen, Madison West, Elvy, Ali Axelrad, Adrienne Evans, Wylie Small, Dana Lyn Baron, Jaclyn Bethany, Cary Christopher, Michelle Twarowska, Kingston Vernes, Jordan Matlock, Anthony Molinari, Daniel Hoffman
- Director: David Fincher
Comments
- RECB3 - 21 January 2024
A Fine Film To Watch
This is a great and monumental film for all viewers to watch. The crew certainly did a remarkable job in creating this film. The storyline of this film was natural and strong. The quality of this film was mesmerizing. The cast selection was huge and terrific. They connected deeply to the storyline and to their respective characters. The chemistry between the cast members was strong and unique. This film reveals to viewers a real insight of the build up of creation. This film shows that life can be different for everyone. I wish I had a real life. I have always remained stuck by everyone who is in my life. This is a fine film for everyone to watch. - lorenzo-nuti - 25 June 2023
The best movie I've seen in ages
Brilliant! Intelligence makes it back to the movies: solidly structured, egregiously written, marvellously interpreted. No wonder most Johns and Marys didn't get it, not within their realm, within reach! Having said that I now have to fill three hundred characters: voluptuous photography fits the movie like shining gloves, the cast of characters couldn't have been better selected in the golden age of silent. Lights, camera angles and shooting sequences impeccably serves and enrich the narrative. The scenography is understatedly perfect, cigarettes' smoke hadn't been filmed better since the '40s. - nogodnomasters - 5 July 2022
I already made my exit
Mank is a biopic of screen writer Herman Mankiewicz who gave us "Citizen Kane" based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. It starts in 1940 and then jumps around with flashbacks. Mank's alcoholism was a main part of the film as was Hearst's hatred of Upton Sinclair.
The production had some light moments and at no time did the drama seem intense. The film had no real climax with Mank drunk at a party coming closest. Amanda Seyfried did a great job.
Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity. - mattstone137 - 16 March 2022
"Who Is Herman J. Mankiewicz?"
In 1942, Citizen Kane changed cinemas forever. The film was a good twenty years ahead of its time because of its filmic innovations, such as fractured storytelling, extreme angles, longer takes, and deep focus cinematography. It's a towering achievement, a film made during WWII which looks positively modern in terms of storytelling and directorial technique. The film was actually panned by many critics and attacked at every opportunity by William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper magnate whose life the film was implicitly based on.
Mank is a 2020 film about Herman J. Mankiewicz as he writes Citizen Kane at the behest of Orson Welles, the wunderkind responsible for the bulk of the film's style and impact. The film actually largely follows his time near Hearst and Louis B. Mayer, then-president of MGM. The writing of Citizen Kane is largely irrelevant. An early warning - if you're in the mood to watch Citizen Kane, or experience it for the first time to see what all the fuss is about, don't watch Mank. Watch Citizen Kane.
To start optimistically: David Fincher is a fine director (easily among the finest of the last twenty years) and his cast, including Gary Oldman in the titular role, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, and Arliss Collins, turn in nice work. The failures of the film certainly don't fall on the acting or direction of the cast as a whole. 1930s Hollywood is also recreated nicely, with many period details thrown in and many classic names dropped throughout. Chaplin's here, O. Selznick's here, Thalberg's here, even von Sternberg, they all make appearances and it's nice to point to the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio from time to time.
The real problems with the film are the script and cinematography. I've never seen a film that looks simultaneously chiaroscuro and flat, with obvious contrasts but working hard to look like a network sitcom in black and white. This distraction, and it is distracting, can probably be placed on Netflix and they're "house look" which for the last few years has been characterized as "flat," "boring," "cheap," and "well-trodden." The decision to shoot digital doesn't help either, as many editing gimmicks have been thrown in to evoke old Hollywood and the films of the thirties, but the actual aesthetic is smooth, crisp, and clean. There's no film grain, no dirt, no spontaneity. It's not an ugly film by any means, but it doesn't achieve the effect it wants either.
As for the script, it's dull. Exposition-heavy, politically minded, and lacking clarity in terms of both stakes and characters, it ambles on and on and on without many points of interest or emotional involvement. Who was Herman J. Mankiewicz? After watching Mank, I have absolutely no idea. Many of the central characters say and act like you'd expect: Mayer is arrogant and conniving, Hearst is a jackass, Mank is clever but bitter, and Marion Davies is an earnest ditz, but that's as far as their characterizations go.
The shallowness is ironic, considering Citizen Kane gave great depth, heart, emotional pull, and psychological weight to fictionalized versions of these characters eighty years prior. But Hollywood today is a different beast; to be objective about their enemies, to give them a shred of humanity, fictionalized or otherwise, would be capitulating. Perhaps it's not about politics, though, because Mankiewicz is most critically underdeveloped; everything we know about him we're told by others, mostly about how great a writer he is but also how darn a degenerate. He's a gambler and an alcoholic, which one think would make him an interesting study, but it doesn't.
Proper context for Kane is also critical going into the film. Without knowledge of Citizen Kane and its structure, art-imitating-life background, and Welles' involvement, viewers will have a hell of a time keeping track of what the hell is going on. The 1934 California election, influenced majorly by Mayer in support of Merriam against Upton Sinclair (another name you should know going in) is easy enough to follow, but most everything revolving around the actual writing of Citizen Kane and the Hollywood history surrounding it is all very hush-hush, made for those who already know. It's hard to imagine anyone who isn't already elated about Hollywood in the 30s getting any enjoyment out of Mank.
To finish, Mank is disappointing. It's disappointing because of its thematic and historical closeness to what's routinely regarded as one of the best films ever made. Citizen Kane is lively, kinetic, pulsating, complex, visually spectacular, and deeply innovative. Mank is static, self-serious, mostly flat visually (there's a cool little montage near the end though) emotionally inert, and closed off from its audience.
The viewer is never more than a spectator, at arm's length from the world, the characters, and the action. Even if it isn't aspiring to the aesthetic qualities of Kane, it could at least aspire to the qualities of other great films-about-films of the recent past, like Boogie Nights or The Player. But it's much too important for that, too busy getting lost in the crusade for its own cause. It's a disappointment, and it may be Fincher's worst work since Alien Cubed.
