One would easily suspect that a movie called Mank will, of course, revolve around the life of the man who shares the same name as its title, or at least around the story that has popularized his name: his feud with Orson Welles over a screenwriting credit for the Oscar-winning Citizen Kane. But while those two are indeed integral to the core of the movie, Mank is actually not so much about the titular man or the making of Citizen Kane more than it is about the politicking of Hollywood big studios. The question placed at the center of the movie isn’t “how was Citizen Kane filmed or made?” but rather “what inspired the story in the first place?” This also isn’t the usual Oscar-baity biopic, but a dense and complex portrait of the golden era of Hollywood from one of the most exciting filmmakers of our generation, David Fincher.
Written by the director’s late father, Jack, with a little tweak from Eric Roth and the younger Fincher himself, the movie opens in 1940, as the titular Herman J. “Mank” Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) arrives to a small, quiet bungalow on North Verde Ranch in Victorville, California. Under an anonymous contract with the wunderkind 24-year-old Orson Welles (Tom Burke), and assisted by a British typist named Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), as well as a German caretaker known as Fräulein Frieda (Monika Gossmann), Mank is tasked with writing the screenplay of what would become the greatest movie ever made. He’s given 90 days to finish the script — 60 days for the first draft, and the rest 30 for some “noodling” — while dealing with a broken leg, chronic alcoholism, and massive career-failure at the same time.
His creative and writing process, however, isn’t the focal point of the movie; it’s just a window into much larger events that eventually become Mank’s inspiration for the main plot of Citizen Kane, which begins when Mank is invited by a fellow writer Charles Lederer (Joseph Cross) for a weekend at San Simeon, a massive manor owned by Californian newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), where he also meets the man’s young mistress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) and two MGM executives, Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) and Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley).
Mank knows right away that these people, with the exception of Davies, aren’t the kind of crowd he’s comfortable being around. They’re these powerful, rich men dictating the ups and downs of Hollywood and its politics while Mank is just a cog in the machine. What bothers him the most, however, is their shallow and selfish political beliefs. Hearst, Mayer, and Thalberg want to support the Republican Frank Merriam in the 1934 California gubernatorial election so they can maintain their way of living, even if it means the poor will have to suffer. While Mank, on the other hand, believes that electing the other candidate, the socialist Upton Sinclair, is the right thing to do if they were to help people survive the Great Depression.
Yet aside from being drunkenly passive-aggressive, Mank is reluctant to do something more. He’s, after all, also benefited from them and their Hollywood studio system. When Mayer announces to his employees that he has no choice but to cut half of their salary for the sake of “family,” Mank can only share his silent disgust with his brother Joe Mankiewicz (Tom Pelphrey). It’s not until he realizes that he might have given Thalberg the idea of creating a fake newsreel and dangerous anti-migrant propaganda to torpedo Sinclair’s chance at being elected — which does become the key reason he lost the election — that Mank finally finds the motivation to finally do something to skewer these terrible men in the way he knows best: writing a movie.
In detailing all the events and tragedies leading up to that moment above, Mank goes back and forth between several time frames. But this storytelling isn’t just used as a nod to Citizen Kane’s non-linear structure; Fincher is smart enough to not make Mank too gimmicky. In fact, the flashbacks are what give the movie a sense of reflectiveness, evolving its biopic nature into something more thoughtful: a character study of a man on a journey of reflecting on his guilt, coming to terms with his conscience, and doing something bold and morally right even if it means it’s going to destroy his career.
Like many other movies about filmmaking, Mank also demonstrates the power of cinema. At its deepest core, Mank seems to suggest that movies have the powerful ability to illuminate the things that are wrong in our society; to ask us to meditate on the things we can do to dismantle a flawed system that only benefits the powerful like Hearst and Mayer. And for that very reason, Mank feels very present and universal. Its focus on election unrest will without a doubt recall the events that happened in America in early November. Its portrayal of greedy, manipulative men trying to do anything in their power to make sure they always get what they want is something we witness almost every day. And to top it off, its depiction of moviegoing experience in a time of crisis — economic depression then, COVID-19 now — makes it all the more eerily relevant. This is a movie that might just look like breathtaking monochrome nostalgia on the surface but underneath has a lot to say about our society right now.
What grounds everything even more are the performances from the ensemble. As the titular character, Oldman is magnetic; both funny and acerbic but also mellow. It’s a performance that’s not just an impersonation, but one that is so lived-in. Every interaction he shares with the other cast, especially with Collins and Seyfried, is always bursting with excitement and warmth. Howard is also equally remarkable as the manipulative and short-tempered Louis. But Mank is without a doubt Seyfried’s show. Every detail she provides to Davies — the Brooklyn accent, the sweet and adorable body gestures, the wit and intelligence — makes her performance a standout among the crowds. Matching the cast’s incredible performances and Fincher’s craftsmanship is the stunning and grainy cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt, strengthened further by Kirk Baxter’s sharp editing and the jazzy score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It’s a marvel, both in acting and technicality.Mank aims to shed light on a flawed but intelligent figure ahead of his time who often gets lost in the footnotes of the history of cinema, or one who’s remembered only for the controversy surrounding him and Welles; and more often than not, it hits the right spot. As Herman Mankiewicz himself puts it: “You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours. All you can hope is to leave the impression of one.” And with Mank, Fincher accomplishes exactly that; an impression that will last forever.
