What I’m Watching: A frustrating biopicDate: 12/16/2020 On Netflix: “Mank”
David Fincher is the latest acclaimed director to release a film through Netflix. He is well known for movies such as “The Social Network,” “Fight Club, “Zodiac,” and “Gone Girl.”
His latest is a biopic on the life of newspaper reporter and theater critic turned screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, known as “Mank” to his friends and enemies alike.
The film is a personal project for Fincher, as his late father had written a screenplay about Mank that was the basis for this screenplay.
Mank was one of the most colorful writers in the 1930s and ‘40s and among its least heralded. He was smart and funny and had been part of the writers who composed the fabled Algonquin Round Table in New York City. He headed up the writers unit for Paramount at one point. Many of his contributions to movies were not credited. For instance, it was Mank who created the idea “The Wizard of Oz” must start in Kansas and be in black and white to provide a contrast of Dorothy’s normal life to her adventure in Oz.
Like many people coming from newspapers during that era, he worked hard, played hard and drank hard.
He was credited for sponsoring and saving hundreds of refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.
His alcoholism undid him and his career. He died at the age of 55.
This film is about how Mank was writing “Citizen Kane” with Orson Welles, a film which won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, which he shared with Welles.
The late film critic Paul Kael put forth an argument the script for the film was almost all Mank’s product, a theory that has been debated among film scholars since its publication in the 1970s.
I’m giving you a lot of background as “Mank” is a film written and produced for people who know 1930s cinema. Yes, other folks could watch it but it’s clear to me that Fincher wanted to layer in as many references to Hollywood in this time period as he could.
If you’re not familiar with “Citizen Kane,” it would actually help you to see it before you see “Mank,” to better understand the references.
Gary Oldman portrays Mank and Fincher stages his story to emulate “Citizens Kane.” The story told in 1940 is about how Mank, confined to a house while he recovers from a car crash, is hired by Welles to write a screenplay. That screenplay incorporates references to a very powerful man, media mogul William Randolph Hearst and his mistress, the talented actress Marion Davies. Mank knew both people well and he had a grudge against Hearst after Hearst’s and MGM’s role in the 1934 gubernatorial race in which author Upton Sinclair was the Democratic candidate.
Throughout the film Mank’s sharp wit either ingratiates him with the power – Hearst – or ruins his career.
Fincher tells the back story using flashbacks that illuminate the story of the how the screenplay was written. It is one of his homages to “Citizen Kane,” which used a similar device. Fincher also shot the film in black and white and used the deep focus which cinematographer Gregg Toland.
ust as “Citizen Kane” told the story of a complicated figure, “Mank” tells a story of a complicated character. And just as Welles and Mank used real life characters as the basis of a fictional story, Fincher is using his version of Mank to tell what is supposed to be a true story.
The film opens with Mank holding court on the Paramount lot in 1931 where he is head of the story department. The typist taking notes during the story meeting appears to be a burlesque performer wearing pasties.
It was at that moment I thought, “Okay, we’re playing with reality.” The inclusion of the partially nude woman is never commented on by any other characters.
But wait, there’s more. “Mank” is such a curious blend of the real and imagined.
Fincher tosses in little details about Hollywood life that really did happen that only a student of 1930s films will recognize. One example is a throwaway remark the character of Irving Thalberg – the legendary head of production at MGM – yells to his secretary about never allowing the Marx Brothers into his office again. The Marx Brothers, frustrated that Thalberg would not see them broke into his office built a fire in his fireplace and roasted potatoes until Thalberg returned.
Another throwaway is a shot when Marion Davies is leaving the MGM lot to go to work at Warner Brothers. Preceding the car which carries Davies is a tractor trailer rig hauling off what would appear to be pieces of a small house. Fincher makes no reference to it.
Hearst had built on the MGM lot a bungalow for Davies instead of her having a conventional dressing room. When Davies left MGM, her house came with her.
Sharp-eyed viewers will notice a black circle in the upper right-hand corner of the screen several times in the film. This is a reference to the signal put on the end of reels to alert the projectionist it was time to switch reels. Having that in a film that was shot digitally is simply another throwaway moment to classic Hollywood.
Fincher does get Marion Davies right with a fine performance from Amanda Seyfried. Davies had a complicated personal life and career. She was a talented comedian who was beloved by films crews for her lack of pretense, but Hearst’s insistence in molding her career cost her dearly.
Gary Oldman plays Mank with a great nuance. His Mank is a man who is aware, in his sober moments, that his career is teetering on the edge of cliff. His screenplay is both his greatest accomplishment and the shove that will send him into the chasm.
Oldman is too old for the part, as he is 62 and as Mank was in his mid-forties when he was working with Welles. I realize that Oldman is a fine actor, but it’s another detail I felt was jarring.
Fincher closes the film with an actual quote from Mank from 1943: “I seem to become more and more of a rat in a trap of my own construction, a trap that I regularly repair whenever there seems to be danger of some opening that will enable me to escape. I haven’t decided yet about making it bomb proof. It would seem to involve a lot of unnecessary labor and expense.”
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