Mank (2020)
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Mank Movie Review
Mank is a 2020 biographical drama film directed by David Fincher and starring Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried. It’s a technical achievement above all else.
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“You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours.
All you can hope is to leave the impression of one“
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After taking a break for six years, Fincher finally returns to feature filmmaking with Mank. This script was apparently written by his father, Jack, but remained unfilmed for decades. Now, David turned it into one of his most atypical, idiosyncratic pictures. While it might be described as a film about the making of ‘Citizen Kane’, it is actually much more than that, but firstly I have to commend the picture’s technicalities.
If judging it purely on these technical terms, the movie’s an absolute masterpiece. I am a huge fan of the Golden Age of Hollywood, especially the thirties decade, so this was right up my alley. While there have been movies about this period before, this one is the most accomplished as it entirely feels and looks like 30s Hollywood and I was living for it.
The black and white cinematography is truly impressive. My personal favorite sequence is the one in the zoo as that one was so sensual and elegant, but the entire film is stunningly filmed with such a believably archaic look to it. Yes, the movie is artificial, but to me it felt believable enough throughout and in certain sequences I genuinely felt that I was watching a 30s film, which is a huge accomplishment for the whole production crew.
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The score is snazzy and fun. It is also very old-fashioned and again very thirties. It’s so full of energy that it made the film itself more entertaining and lively. But the biggest achievement has to be the sound. This film does something that no film has ever done before – it distorts the sound and especially the dialogue to make it sound archaic. Couple that with the actors’ mostly pitch-perfect accent delivery and you’ve got a movie that operates at full capacity as an early sound motion picture.
The editing is also tremendous. There is a lot to be said about the film’s pacing as it runs over two hours and sometimes it can feel overlong and even a bit tedious, but the editing is masterful as it sold in its entirety the flashback and jumping in time narrative structure. The movie as a whole is a perfect mix of grainy and old-fashioned and polished and artistic with Fincher’s direction being undeniably remarkable. I would even call his work here brilliant as he’s never done a movie like this before, not even close, but he genuinely did a masterful job and I am rooting hard for him to finally snatch that Oscar.
Mank is immensely dense. There is a lot to dissect here, but what is most surprising is a very heavy emphasis on politics. You would think that a film about the making of what is usually regarded as the best movie of all time would focus more on ‘Kane’ itself and Welles as its director, but you would be mistaken as the movie actually has only a couple of scenes with Welles and for the most part it focuses on the Hollywood machinery of the period and its close connection to the political system of the country, but specifically the state of California.
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Probably the movie’s focal point is actually the Frank Merriam versus Upton Sinclair election of 1934. Sinclair was a socialist and he was widely hated in Hollywood, so they organized an extensive smear campaign and also the first modern, budgeted campaign for Merriam, resulting in his contested win. To have a film about a contested election be released in the year of such an election was unexpectedly timely, but simply seeing the parallels drawn from 30s Hollywood to the current one was fascinating.
Hollywood is still a very politicized business, but now it is liberal and very pro-Democratic. In the thirties, it was the polar opposite. It was very interesting witnessing that vast difference, but also the similarities in the biases and campaigning stemming from this industry. The effect of The Great Depression on the industry was also very well explored as well as the smugness and unscrupulousness of the various producers.
All of these themes made the movie a rich viewing, but one that has to be watched at least twice to be fully comprehended and appreciated. That denseness made the viewing experience frustrating and so did the problematic pacing and some conventional biographical genre conventions that seriously affected the overall quality of the film. It could have been amazing, but it landed as just pretty good and only superior in technical aspects.
Mank is mostly very well acted, though some performances are questionable. Gary Oldman is very strong in the titular role and the man in question is interesting and complex. I also loved Amanda Seyfried’s turn as Marion Davies, this very likable actress of the period. Her performance is surprisingly terrific. Others are also fine, but the character count is too large, again leading to that convoluted feeling.
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