Mank (2020)

I was wrong: This 2020 Academy Best Picture nominee took even longer to come to fruition. Too bad the writer, Jack Fincher, father of director David, didn't live to see it. Anyway, once again, I gave it priority among the nominees only because of its availability.

We tend to think of Citizen Kane as exclusively an Orson Welles (Tom Burke) work, but Herman J. "Mank" Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) gets credit as a co-writer. Exactly how much credit he deserves is disputed, but in this telling, he writes the entire first draft. This is not easy for him to do in a timely fashion, because he has a drinking problem, a broken leg from a car crash, a half-estranged wife (Tuppence Middleton), the hostility of William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) over this imminent unflattering depiction, and general unpopularity for not opposing the California gubernatorial run of Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye).

Of course, it's hard (but not impossible) to remain engaged with a story about a bedridden man, so David Fincher returns to the practice of time jumps, going back up to a decade. Exact locations and years are given on screen at their first appearance, but you still have to be moderately alert to keep them all straight. Mainly, I took notice of whether Mank could walk. He interacts with key figures such as producers Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard), Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley), and David O. Selznick (Toby Leonard Moore) and actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), in addition to his brother Joe (Tom Pelphrey), who is much less famous in this picture even tho I know more of his work. Probably none of Mank's connections have better than mixed feelings about him.

The most distinctive thing about this film is its imitation of CK, somewhat like how Ed Wood imitates the oeuvre of Ed Wood. It's in black and white, the opening credits have an old-school presentation, and some of the cinematic shots (which won an Oscar) make for obvious homage. Kinda sad how the main holdup in getting it made was studios' fear that modern audiences wouldn't go for that.

Oddly enough, Mank received more Oscar nods than CK, yet none of them was for the screenplay. Maybe the voters felt that the timeline was too messy. Maybe they didn't like the dialog-to-action ratio. I don't think it was the swearing, which, while jarring in an old-fashioned context, is hardly profuse. Maybe it played too fast and loose with history in a way the voters didn't care for.

Oldman is deft enough, but I'm not surprised he didn't win again already. For one thing, he's too much of, well, an old man; in fact, he and Seyfried are 29 years apart and playing same-age characters. Fincher did not allow heavy makeup in order not to interfere with perfomance, so Oldman doesn't look the part. I suppose it's less obvious without color, but still.

Apart from that, Fincher was reportedly highly perfectionist, running his actors ragged. That may have helped in scenes where characters are supposed to be tired and/or exasperated. I do get the sense of ambition throughout the picture. To some degree, Fincher is the new Welles, with Mank as his pet project.

Obviously, it's not the next CK in the sense of revolution, but will it be seen as a classic? Maybe a cult classic, judging from its moderate ratings, especially on IMDb. I for one enjoyed the 131 minutes pretty well and wouldn't mind people talking about it in decades to come.