Review: Mank

Image courtesy of Netflix.

There's an old saying - and a variation of it appears in John Ford's classic "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" - that when it comes to printing the fact or the legend, always print the legend. David Fincher's visually sumptuous new film, "Mank," which sort of chronicles the behind-the-scenes intrigue in the writing of the screenplay for the iconic "Citizen Kane," is a film that follows this mantra, but it's not so much a glitzy picture about the Hollywood days of yore - in fact, it's something else altogether that might take a little time and reflection to really wrap one's mind around it.

Fincher is one of filmdom's great obsessives - much like Stanley Kubrick, his demands on the set involve actors doing hundreds of takes per scene, and his films are often interested in obsessiveness (the 2007 masterpiece "Zodiac") and power (the incredible "The Social Network"). His latest film takes its name from its subject - Herman Mankiewicz, the boozy, aging Hollywood screenwriter and brother of director Joseph Mankiewicz ("All About Eve") who shares the screenwriting credit for Orson Welles' towering 1941 achievement.

As the film opens, Mank (Gary Oldman) is in the process of healing from a car crash and has been taken to a secluded house in the desert to write "American," the original working title for "Citizen Kane." He is overseen by a by-the-book nurse (Lily Collins), who has a beau in the military, and is told that he is not to drink while working on the script, a rule that we know will soon be broken. Mank's wife, referred to as "Poor Sarah" (Tuppence Middleton), pops in and out of the drama, and we quickly learn that she puts up with Mank's antics out of a sense of loyalty and, occasionally, bemusement.

Welles is a presence mostly over the phone for much of the picture - he occasionally checks in on Mank's progress, that is, until a final confrontation between the two that could be seen as slightly ungenerous to American film's arguably greatest director. 

But the emphasis - and most interesting sections of the film - have little to do with "Kane," and more to do with the fraught relationship - told in flashback - between Mank and studio head Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) and his friend, newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), on whom "Citizen Kane" was based. Mank manages to strike up a friendship with Marion Davies (a very good Amanda Seyfried), an actress who was romantically involved with Hearst.

Fincher has never especially been a political director - films like "Fight Club" and "The Social Network" are seemingly more interested in psychology and sociology than making political statements - but "Mank" has a prescient political undercurrent that makes it fascinating in a timely way. Mayer and Hearst back Frank Merriam - the union-busting Republican candidate - in the race for California's governorship in 1934, while Mank has a soft spot for author and self-proclaimed socialist and Democratic candidate Upton Sinclair.

In a series of scenes that feel as if they could be ripped out of today's headlines, Merriam's Republican backers in the movie studio system craft a series of documentary-style campaign ads that use distorted facts and actors posing as voters to slander Sinclair as a dangerous socialist. As he recognizes Mayer and Hearst for who they really are, Mank's friendship with the two men begins to fray, ultimately leading to two awkward blow ups - one on election night and another at a dinner party, where Oldman - in his best moment in the film - pitches the crowd at Hearst's house on a script about a newspaper tycoon who has sold his soul.

The heart of the film, however, is the friendship between Mank and Davies, especially during an enchanting evening stroll through Hearst's ridiculously lavish gardens, which include a zoo with elephants and giraffes. Mank tells Davies he sees her as a great star of dramatic pictures - and not just a comedienne - while Davies obviously sympathizes with Mank's sensibilities, even if she's not willing to outwardly criticize Hearst, the man who provides her with everything she needs.

So, while "Mank" - shot in gorgeous black and white and featuring numerous dream-like sequences - isn't a typical tale of classic Hollywood, it bears some similarity to such masterpieces as "Chinatown" and "Mulholland Drive," in which vast conspiracies are hinted at, but never completely revealed, and the town is seen less as a dream factory than a battlefield. On the one hand, Fincher might not seem like the filmmaker you'd expect to make this type of picture, but on the other its various obsessions seem to fit right into his wheelhouse.

Regardless, it's a movie of great intrigue, and one that I'll certainly want to revisit at some point soon. "Mank" is less the story of how "Citizen Kane" was made, and more about how life's disillusions, failures and disappointments can occasionally prompt flawed people to make great art. I'd highly recommend this movie.