David Fincher’s Mank is a film about the power of subversive art and why, despite the oppressive forces against it, that is still a cause worth fighting for. Citizen Kane was a dangerously provocative endeavor for its time, or any time, because it dared to reveal secrets about one of the country’s richest and most influential figures. It resonates to this day because it’s quintessentially American, unrestrained in illustrating the extent to which money is used, as Kane says, “to buy things” — including, and perhaps essentially, the desire to buy power.
But people can’t be bought. Love can’t be bought. A human soul cannot be bought. The best you can do is surround yourself with people attracted by money who pretend to love you. And that’s never enough, because it’s never genuine. But cash can be a catalyst too. Mank is a film about a writer who famously said, “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots.” Once the toast of the town, Mank found himself on the outs, so he took a job, like so many others, for a paycheck. He eventually bit the hand that fed him, but thanks to a stroke of luck and the magic alchemy of collaboration he helped create what is arguably the greatest film of all time.
In telling this mostly untold story of the origins of Citizen Kane, Fincher takes the exacting, funny, and ultimately melancholy screenplay written by his late father Jack Fincher, and expands on it with trademark visual mastery. Rather than simply relate how Kane’s script came to be written, sequences are Cinema itself. With flashback rhythms unfolding, waltz-like, two steps forward one step back, Mank carries us back to 1934 and serves up a feast of sumptuous beauty, from costumes to hair to makeup to production design.
Jack Fincher’s Mank is built around the events that led to the conception and birth of Citizen Kane with an eye on the one name that often gets left behind, Herman J. Mankiewicz, played with sloppy grace by Gary Oldman, whom we first meet when he’s been laid up with a broken leg after a car accident. Assigned a sharp assistant and caregiver, Rita (Lily Collins), Mank is hired by Orson Welles who has just arrived on the west coast as the hottest thing in Hollywood after hitting it big with his War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Their shared goal, to devise Orson’s debut film for RKO.
The trick was to keep the alcoholic Mank sober enough to finish the work. The problem was that Mank could not really work sober. It happens that way sometimes. The same demons that fueled his persona as the life of the party also fueled his willingness to open a vein and spill it all out on the page.
Mank’s entire career had been spent writing and ghostwriting mostly frivolous comedies, but his talent for witty, sophisticated dialogue was enough to catch the eye of Welles. When given the opportunity to do something significant, Mank settled on the story of a powerful rich oligarch, in a script he initially called The American. It was the moment in the life of a writer for hire to reach for something that mattered.
To pay his late father tribute, and to revisit similar terrain that he explored in The Social Network, Fincher has made Mank not just as the story of Citizen Kane but also as a cinematic tribute to it. Even for this astonishingly talented visual director, that would be a challenge that put his all skills to the test. How to make a film about Citizen Kane that could stand alongside that level of cinematic achievement? The film is flooded with references and nods to Welles and Toland’s masterful camerawork — from the visual pairing of Louis B. Mayer (the great Arliss Howard) and Mr. Bernstein to the silhouette of the nurse walking down the hallway, to the shots from below, to faces in shadow — and in all ways a celebration of the beauty of black and white cinematography. What we remember from Kane is that massive fireplace, the jigsaw puzzle, the scream, the blinding limelights of the opera house, Kane as the only man clapping for Susan in the darkness.
What strikes us about Mank is another scream, the way silk hangs on the curves of Marion Davies (Seyfried), how she hides and sneaks liquor (she would end up dying from alcoholism later in life), and how Charles Dance looms so large as the iconic Hearst, unceremoniously escorting Mank out of his place and forever slamming the heavy giant door in his face.
Mank is more touching and sweeter than Citizen Kane. It is a wink and a nod to Welles and certainly isn’t a film that’s meant to wrestle any credit away from him. Anyone who has seen Kane knows that regardless of who wrote it, without the performance alone and the ensemble acting it could never have become what it is. Here, it is a brilliant writer whose life clearly would have been much more if only he’d figured it out in time. Instead, he drank most of his life away and somehow muddled through — until that one moment came when his much more successful brother told him, “It’s the best thing you’ve ever written.” Even if he isn’t remembered much today, even if not many people know his name — his story was worth telling because without him there is no Citizen Kane.
The folly of making Kane is part what drives the film’s greatness. It is folly that must be observed from an insider’s perspective — a silent observer — who was kept around because Hearst liked his funny stories. Only Herman Mankiewicz could have conceived of Citizen Kane because he knew the story before he even put pen to paper. Kane reveals Mank’s own failure as much as Welles obvious towering arrogance. According to Welles, the film is a cautionary tale about how wealth corrupts. Fincher and Fincher’s Mank weave this beautifully into the retelling by bringing back the socialist ideals of Hearst’s early life juxtaposed with the political corruption that replaced it.
In Mank, we flash backwards and forwards to both the writing process and the events that led to Mank deciding to finally unmask the American oligarch. In so doing, we get to spend time at the Hearst castle in all of its grotesque glory, with the private zoo, and the collection of statues, and of course, Marion Davies. Amanda Seyfried brings the pretty, funny Davies to life by portraying her charms to best advantage, and ultimately does so with immense sympathy and kindness.
One of the complaints some have had with Citizen Kane over the years is that it was cruel to Marion Davies, whose career wasn’t anything like the disaster of Susan Alexander we see in Kane. But in Mank we can see how her story might have easily ended up that way, if Hearst’s grandiose ambitions had been forced on Davies, and how sometimes fiction can simply swallow up real life to make a better movie.
For almost all of its decades-long glory, most people credit Orson Welles entirely for Kane. I can’t tell you how many times my own mind tried to grapple with how a 24-year-old could have made that movie. I could maybe understand the directing, the staging, and the acting because of Welle’s experience in the New York theater. But the wisdom of the story, the rumination on a failed life had to have come from someone else. It’s just not possible to conjure up what that feels like at age 24. But Mank knew. And this film shows why.
In making a movie about the greatest movie ever made, there’s bound to be a sense of inspiration, and even an obligation, to aim for the same heights visually, and you will not see a more beautifully shot film this year. Every second of it, every frame is itself a masterwork. And if that is all you get from Mank you will still be getting more than you will get from any other film this year. But that;’s far from all there is to it. Mank goes so much deeper than that.
No other director working today can master the frame like Fincher. His films are intricate puzzles that can never be fully absorbed in one viewing because it isn’t just the composition, or the editing, or how the score blends with the action, but is all of those things together at once to coalesce the way they do. This is true of every film he has ever made but it is especially true with Mank. At some point you almost throw up your hands at the beauty of it all and think, wow. I mean, how?
Most of us live lives of quiet desperation and many of us, despite how much we try to live our best lives as our best selves, we fail to attain our dreams. Perhaps only those who have lived with failure can authentically write about it. That’s how you know at the heart of Citizen Kane is a sadness of someone who could not get life right, a sense of loss that could never have been written by the young, hot, and arrogant Orson Welles. Though there are many aspects of the life of Kane that were taken from Welles own life, especially his childhood, the heartbreaking arc of man’s ultimately empty life comes from a place of knowing it, not from merely imagining it
Even if it’s just the one time — the one great thing a person does — asking for credit is never easy, especially if you’re the “organ grinder’s monkey” whose entire profession has been bought and paid for by someone who never had any high expectations from you to begin with. Though Herman Mankiewicz was rightly and notoriously celebrated in the 1930s, it would turn out that, aside from Kane, Mank’s legacy would be overshadowed by his much more successful brother Joe. In the film, Mank tells Joe that he’s washed up. There’s no doubt Mank felt that unless he claimed his richly deserved credit for Citizen Kane, that he might be forgotten.
The debate about who gets to claim credit for what parts of that perfect screenplay has raged on for decades, with some falling into the camp that Mank wrote it all (Pauline Kael, John Houseman), And others falling into the camp that gives Orson Welles partial or equal credit (Peter Bogdanovich, Harlan Lebo). Whatever revisions may have been between the first draft and what we see on the screen, we know Welles alone never again wrote anything this good, and we have to wonder how Xanadu could so perfectly replicate the cloistered world of San Simeon if Welles never met Hearst, and was never a trusted confidante of Marion Davies.
The truth of it is that most all the best films are collaborations. Even if Welles could have claimed sole credit for Kane’s screenplay, it would never have touched the heights it reached without the extraordinary collaborations that make it what it is: Gregg Toland’s cinematography, the Mercury Theater troupe’s acting, Robert’s Wise’s editing, Bernard Herrmann’s score. Remove any one of those elements and you no longer have the greatest film ever made.
Mank, though it is driven by Fincher’s persistence of vision, it too would not be what it is without the collaborative efforts of the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the glorious, heart-stopping cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt, editing by Kirk Baxter, costumes by Trish Summerville, and the best screenplay of the year by Jack Fincher, who could have no idea what a magnificent film his son would make of the thing he never lived long enough to take deserved credit for.
I always flinch when I hear anyone describe Fincher’s work as cold. First, because it’s facile. Second, because whenever people expect movies to wrap them in a blanket of warmth, what a lot of them really need is to be told how to feel. Plenty of filmmakers are glad to comply. It’s easy enough to tug on the heartstrings for catharsis, but that’s only one of the functions of art. The best directors don’t resort to such tactics. They find a path to emotional reaction, touching our heart by way of our minds. When we follow the route Mank takes, from the first shot to the last and not be moved by it is, I think, to underestimate the whole point of cinema at all. Film art this good.
We’re living through extraordinary times. We’re compelled to watch a powerful Kane-like figure right now, forced to endure the folly of ego and pride, in the midst of a global pandemic. And if that’s not already enough chaos to bear, we’re confronted by a surreal crisis in journalism, as most writers struggle in vain to make sense of it all. But luckily we’re also living through a time when David Fincher is making movies.
Mank is a film about the power of subversive art and the forces, for better or worse, that propel artists into the maelstrom. It’s a treacherous task, but thank god for those bold enough to tackle it. As long as political and cultural currents aren’t choked by puritanical censorship, it’s the only power artists have got to expose those who seek to shut them up.
Achingly beautiful, impossibly detailed and wildly smart, a head-to-toe masterpiece, Mank is the best film of the year.
not everyone is falling head over heels with this movie, though. but I’m glad it might gave fincher a real shot at director, finally
I could make a list of all the Best Pictures winners that I’m not head over heels about, but nobody would have time to read a list that lengthy.
I’m head over heels about Mank though. (I might as well go ahead and admit it. You guys would figure it out eventually.)
So, Mank looks on paper as..
“Safe” nominations:
Picture
Director
Original Screenplay
Cinematography
Score
Production Design
Costume Design
Film Editing
Likely:
Actor (Gary Oldman)
Possible:
Actress/Supporting Actress (Amanda Seyfried)
Supporting Actor (Tom Burke)
Visual Effects
Make Up and Hairstyling
Longshot:
Sound
Song?
Another performer.
So between 8 to 11 nominations probably. If they go really crazy for it, 13 to 14.
As much as I’d want him to get a nomination (because in my opinion he should have won an Oscar a year ago for The Souvenir), Tom Burke doesn’t seem to be the nominee for supporting actor from this movie. Dance and Howard are the ones that seem to get a lot of raves.
Also, I’m curious about your choice of putting Oldman in the “likely” category rather than “safe”
I went with Burke because he is playing Welles, basically.
Given how competitive Best Actor always is, I never discard that the star of the frontrunner would be snubbed easily, so I wouldn’t say Oldman is a safe pick, just likely.
I agree with Ferdinand again. It does seem the production is betting on Dance for supporting actor, either because he has the meatier role or because of his veteran status, his name was put in bold on the poster alongside Oldman and Seyfried. Burke, on the other hand, I can’t even see if his character is depicted on the poster and his name is buried among the list of supporting cast.
Of course, we would need confirmation from those who have actually seen the film. Sasha does mention Dance in her review but not Burke, so I gather Oldman, Seyfried and Dance are the leading trio of the film, though I would not be surprised to see Mank reap multiple nominations for supporting actor if voters really love it.
I’m glad to see AwardsDaily has the capable staff and smart readership to become the internet’s essential source for Manksplaining ®
Lol! We have so little to discuss Oscar-wise this season, the slightest detail becomes an excuse to write a thesis.
Could join Roma and The Irishman as one of the most nominated Netflix candidates so far. The question: Will it end like Roma (some key wins plus very close in the Best Pic-category) or The Irishman? (happy to be nominated)
My brain’s still in election mode, and I’m minded to rate all of these on a Safe/Likely/Lean/Toss-up scale.
Thanks for making me even more excited about my most anticipated “Oscar film” of the year.
Hopefully Fincher finally gets the Oscar(s) he should’ve gotten a decade ago.
This is a beautifully written review. You don’t see many of these nowadays, most of the online critics are sloppy in their writing and they don’t really have much to say. Not the case here. Looking forward to seeing the movie.
Wonderful review, I just have one note: on a few occasions you allude to the concept that Welles couldn’t have alone understood the concept of a “failed life” or a “sense of loss” at age 24, and that proves that Mankiewicz’s work on the screenplay is incredibly important. While I’m on no level downplaying Mankiewicz’s incredibly important part in the movie, it should be noted that just a year later, at age 25, Welles directed and recieved sole writing credit for The Magnificent Ambersons, which is one of the greatest films ever made even in its current form and is just as much as Citizen Kane a film about a “failed life” and a “sense of loss”
That’s a really very good point, Ferdinand, and I don’t want to debate you because you’re formidable and you would run rings around me.
But the difference (perhaps?) is that Citizen Kane was an original screenplay, so all the depth and authenticity of its sense of loss had to be created from whole cloth, on a blank page.
While The Magnificent Ambersons was an adaptation of a massive novel by Booth Tarkington, a contemporary of William Faulkner and F Scott Fitzgerald, and nearly their equal. Ambersons the novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1919.
Like Mankiewicz, Tarkington was 45 or 50 years old when he wrote the 553-page Ambersons novel. Welles would have had abundant material there to distill into his film version (which I deeply adore, even, as you say, in it’s current form, missing the 45 minutes that got butchered out of it.)
I’m not tryin to argue! Just posing the possibility that Tarkington might be regarded as Welles “collaborator” in co-creating the impact of The Magnificent Ambersons on film.
Absolutely, I just think that it’s expressive that Welles went for these two projects, and both of them turned out incredible and their expression of these topics is, while not exactly similar (with Kane’s failure being a modern crash whereas Ambersons feels more about a fizzling out of a more traditional excess-induced existence), at least comparable both tonally and emotionally. Most likely that expression of those feelings comes at least partly from Welles. Not necessarily fully, Mankiewicz and Tarkington surely both had their incredible influences and those influences can be seen not only in the similar tones but also in the differences between the films on a thematic level. But Welles is all over both of those scripts on a thematic level as well. Although it’s funny that as he grows older, he steers away mostly from these big rise and fall in American society movies. Most of them of course have a fall from grace narrative (F for Fake I think is the only one I’ve seen that doesn’t have that narrative thread in it for obvious reasons) but the point of view feels more internalized, the points of view change and the experiences often don’t feel as much the main source of tragedy in those films (possibly the only exception to this is Chimes at Midnight but there Falstaff’s loss is very different from the loss in either Citizen Kane or The Magnificent Ambersons)
Oh for sure, the first two films that Welles chose to do clearly touched him on a
personal level, and he brought his own sensibilities to each of them.
I think it was the essay in the Criterion edition booklet for The Magnificent Ambersons where I read that Welles felt an affinity for Tarkington because of their shared roots in northern middle America — Indiana and Wisconsin.
… yep, here’s a link to that essay:
https://films.criterionchannel.com/current/posts/6064-echoes-of-tarkington
Two quotes from that essay jump out at me and support your position and mine too:
So. Wow, right? What you felt instinctively, Ferdinand, is backed up by fact.
Then there’s this:
So that supports my impression that part of Welles’ genius was in choosing source material, inspirations, and collaborators that gave him abundant riches that he could then synthesize.
We can all agree that Welles brought as much to the table as anyone, but that he was at his very best when he could bounce his brilliance off of other geniuses at the same table.
Trust me, part of the beauty of Mank is the way Jack Fincher and David Fincher, probe the roots of the complex attitudes that Mankiewicz possessed, and they tease out those connections with elegant flashbacks that overlap and lace the film together.
Again, I never meant to question what you say, Ferdinand, but only wanted to suggest another way of looking at it. Not a better way. Just a different way.
Taji knows the hell out of Welles, but this week has exhausted his desire to discuss much. He could probably settle some of these authorship questions for us, but you know how Taji is: he doesn’t want anyone to think he’s taking sides.
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This is incredibly fascinating stuff!
And of course there are incredibly many points of view to everything, and all of them are in cases like this very much worth looking into. You don’t need to worry about me being somehow offended by you throwing out an alternative read of something, as I hope you guys aren’t by me throwing out an alternative read.
Movies wouldn’t be art if they didn’t inspire and invite alternative readings!
AD wouldn’t be AD if we didn’t toss our individual opinions and insights at one another!
Totally. Sasha mentioned a study a while back, about how reading novels develops empathy, as readers are exposed to a variety of lives different from their own, and I presume it’s not limited to novels: films and plays, fiction or non-fiction, may have similar effects. So it stands to reason that a curious and well-read precocious genius like Orson Welles would have enough imagination and sensibility to perceive things well beyond his own age and personal experience.
As you said, that doesn’t diminish Mank’s contribution to the project, he was certainly very helpful in providing anecdotes and insights based on his own encounters with Hearst, but I do believe Welles had enough maturity and intelligence to grasp the psychology of his character.
I am usually a simple lurker, but had to jump in and say that this comment and all the responses, are QUALITY! We can only guess and who played exactly what role in such a mythic collaboration, but the questions Ferdinand and Christophe bring up, and the excerpts Ryan provides, percolated my brain cells good.
If pressed, “Citizen Kane” is my favorite movie – the ultimate nerd cliche, but my true feeling. I feel like all of the possible pitfalls of life, twisted notions of America, and the ever-expanding possibilities of cinema are contained within. And yes, “Ambersons” is one of the great literary adaptations, and few films of the era are more bursting with ideas.
Working in a library for years with the public, I can say that I have met people who lived to be old and had no insight at all, and children who seemed to have unlocked the workings of life already, just by soaking up everything they could. Seems like Welles was definitely decades ahead of his actual age in understanding, and his ambition was too boundless for when he came up. But he was also smart enough to know no inspiration comes in a vacuum – hence the reliance on the skills of Mank, Tarkington, etc.
It starts at 81 on Metacritic. Can’t wait to watch it in the theatre (if they remain open).