Mank (2020) * * *

 

Directed by:  David Fincher

Starring:  Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, Tom Pelphrey, Arliss Howard, Lily Collins, Sam Troughton, Tom Burke

Mank has no grand statements to make about its subject except to say he made some poor decisions, especially while drunk, which was a lot of the time.   Herman Mankiewicz (Oldman) is a broken down alcoholic screenwriter stuffed away in a remote California desert home to write what would become Citizen Kane.   Because of a recent car accident, (in which he wasn't the driver), Mank is laid up with a broken leg and is teetering on the edge of a broken spirit because his caretakers are under orders not to serve him alcohol.   As Mank writes his pages, Orson Welles' friend John Houseman (Troughton), whisks them off to Welles for his approval.   What Mank writes is brilliant, yes, but also dangerous because it bases Kane on William Randolph Hearst (Dance), who even in advanced age wields a great deal of power in Hollywood.   Mank, Hearst, and Hearst's longtime companion Marion Davies (Seyfried) have a history, told in flashback beginning from the early 1930's when Mank was a screenwriter for MGM.

As Mank's brother Joseph (Pelphrey) and even Marion Davies try to talk Mank out of submitting the draft to Welles, Mank figures since he's already a mess, what more could Hearst do to him?   The rest is cinematic history.   Citizen Kane became an enduring, groundbreaking classic, even though it only won one Oscar for Welles' and Mank's screenplay.   The original deal was for Mank to ghostwrite the script and Welles would take the credit, but Mank has a change of heart and pushes for credit, which strains his relationship with Welles.   If there is one thing Mank excels at, other than screenwriting, it's straining personal relationships.

Filmed in black and white, Mank is technically marvelous throughout, while the story takes a little more time to gel.   Mank is not presented as a tragic figure.   He is witty, has a punch line for every straight line, gambles on just about anything (including a gubernatorial election) and loves his booze.  However, he continually feels the need to put his professional life in jeopardy by pissing off his benefactors, such as studio mogul Louis B. Mayer (Howard) and Hearst himself by backing "socialist" Upton Sinclair in the 1934 California governor's race.   Sinclair's ideas are deemed a threat to the wealthy, while Mank admires the writer-turned-politician.   It doesn't work out for Mank, either financially or professionally and leads him to a pathetic state where he is bloated and boozed up, trying to finish the elephantine task of writing Citizen Kane under a sixty-day deadline.

Gary Oldman is likely headed to another Oscar nomination, and like his Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017), he infuses Mank with likability, a certain charm, and eccentricity.   Fincher is correct not to turn Mank into a cautionary tale or tragedy, but a bemused look at ten years in the life of a Hollywood insider who became an outsider.    Amanda Seyfried is also worthy of an Oscar nod.  Her Davies plays the dumb blonde role everyone expects of her, but she knows the score and even has a fondness for Mank, even while Mank insults her longtime beau Hearst and eventually alienates himself from the fortress at San Simeon.   It is the best performance of her career.   

Mank is far from perfect, mostly because it doesn't truly get going until about the one-hour mark, but it gives us some insight into an imperfect man who for a while fit right in with the imperfect Hollywood studio system.    If only he'd learned to stay out of trouble.