“You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours; all you can hope is to leave an impression of one” says a bed ridden Herman Mankiewicz while trying to finish an early draft of Citizen Kane in David Fincher’s new historical drama Mank. Dealing with immense bouts of writer’s block and recovering from a car accident, Mankiewicz, played with incredible vitriol by Gary Oldman, has been set up in a desert California home where he is to dictate the script of a project he is writing for one up and coming film wunderkind Orson Welles, and the studio RKO Pictures. As he attempts to write his magnum opus, he is pervaded by memories of his years in 1930s and 40s Hollywood, the friends he met along the way, and the corruption he bore witness to.
Written with wit and a lack of conventional narrative structure by Jack Ficher (the late father of David Fincher), Mank captures not just the glamour and grit of Mankiewicz’s career, but the glamour and grit of Hollywood, and evidently American society as well. Throughout his career in 1930s Hollywood, we watch as Mankiewicz is introduced to the actress and cultural “it” girl, Marion Davies (played by a vibrantly defiant Amanda Seyfried), key Hollywood producers like Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer, and eventually, the man who would lay the framework for such a Charles Foster Kane to be written, newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Hearst’s grandeur and influence are seen throughout this film; he represents the wealth and corrupted ideology that Mankiewicz so greatly despises. In one of the film’s more compelling plotlines, Hearst, along with the numerous aforementioned Hollywood producers, takes a stand against Democratic Gubernatorial nominee of California, Upton Sinclair. Sinclair’s socialist ideals, that have previously appealed to California voters, appear to threaten the upper-class wellbeing of Hearst and his friends. Through the use of propaganda newsreels, Hearst put out deceptively influential media, pushing favor away from Sinclair. As Mankiewicz watches this all happen, he understands all too well the power of the media and it becomes clear the influence that this incident will have on his future writing.
Mank draws you into this time period with incredible ease and accuracy- particularly through Jack Fincher’s writing. Fincher writes out of chronological order, taking the audience out of the 1942 desert hotel, and back to the enchanting early 30s. The parallels we are supposed to see between the screenshots of Mankiewicz and the way time and his life in early hollywood has changed him are clear. The repetition of lines, the eerily similar conversations (“Are you familiar with the parable of the organ grinder’s monkey?”) all make you feel as if you are stuck within the continuous cycle of Mankiewicz’s memory. Long, stylized dialogue draws you into conversations with some of the most powerful people of the time. You feel less as if you are watching a film, but experiencing a memory.
While Mank provides a stirring history lesson through its language, it provides one visually as well. Shot on black and white, high dynamic, digital film, David Fincher’s mastery behind the camera adds yet another level of expertise to this film. Fincher is able to provide a specific stylization of the time period without overshadowing the events that take place. The contrast that is provided by his direction is astonishing, making even the most heartfelt moments of the film seem cold and distant. By the end of the film you are left with a feeling of emptiness; there is a metaphorical ritual of sacrifice that every character must go through and there is a clear notion that some weren’t the wiser for it.
In the end, what was most surprising about Mank is how it doesn’t just capture the life and writing process of Herman Mankiewicz during his time working on Citizen Kane, but displays the socio-political climate of those years of the 30s and 40s that are so well illuminated within his 1942 masterpiece. Many of the characters we meet, like Hearst and Sinclair, represent an ongoing battle within our ever-present political system: Those who have vs. Those who have not. The ideas of political propaganda perpetuated by those at the top, and the ideas of a growing socialist movement are connected very clearly to our current political climate, and provide a fascinating parallel between two vastly different time periods, almost a century apart. While Mankiewicz is a victim of neither one of these ideas, his witness to them would provide the inspiration for one of the greatest films ever made, Citizen Kane, which, along with Mank, will provide generations to come with an insight into a world corrupted by money and power.
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