REVIEW: 'Mank' - David Fincher's beautiful and critical view of a world gone by
"You cannot capture a man's entire life in two hours. All you can hope is to leave the impression of one."
In the late 1930s, Hollywood was abuzz with the young filmmaker Orson Welles. While only in his early 20s, Welles had shocked and wowed the United States with his legendary radio drama adaptation of The War of the Worlds. Welles was brought quickly into the Hollywood world. After signing a never before seen deal with RKO Pictures which gave Welles total control over his first project, he collaborated with problematic screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz to create Citizen Kane (1941). The film was lauded by critics but was received less favourably by audiences. Today, Welles' Citizen Kane is revered as one of the Great Films and is even considered by some to be the greatest of them all.
The film was revolutionary. It's famous for its groundbreaking technical and narrative elements. It profoundly changed the ways in which Hollywood pictures were lit, shot, edited, and told. After its resurgence in popularity in the 1950s, Citizen Kane was rightly given the reputation of one of the most influential American films ever produced. The art of cinema owes a profound debt of gratitude to the legacy left behind by Citizen Kane.
But that was 80 years ago.
At first glance, Mank seems to be a far stray from Fincher's previous work. Fincher has a filmography dominated by intricate and dark thrillers. Known for his films like the iconic Fight Club, the crime dramas Zodiac and Se7ev, as well as the Aaron Sorkin-penned drama The Social Network, Fincher operates in a world of serial killers, obsessed men, and the dark side of humanity. There's a pessimism to it all. Mank is about classical Hollywood sans the blood, sex, and violence expected from a Fincher feature.
Instead, with Mank, Fincher seems concerned with presenting some sort of an ode to the history of Hollywood. With its old-school black-and-white cinematography and clever screenplay scene introductions, it seems as if Mank is dedicated to the older times. Fincher is paying back some small sum of that debt owed to Citizen Kane. I am far from the first to notice this. While this is all most certainly true, Mank is far more complex than that. Mank finds its being in a different type of pessimism than what is commonly seen in Fincher's other work. Fincher isn't concerned with the blood or the violence, but rather with the superficiality of it all. Fincher sabotages the workings of the world of classical Hollywood.
Fincher dedicates himself to presenting Mank in the form of films from days gone by. Mank is visually a recreation of the past. Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt spoke about this in an interview with IBC. The article reports that Messerschmidt and Fincher consulted the visual styles of Wuthering Heights (1939), Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Big Sleep (1946), The Big Combo (1955), and Casablanca (1942). The production of Mank even opted to shoot a scene set at night in the broad daylight, a technique not all that uncommon in the cinema of the 30s and 40s.
The film's composers, Nine Inch Nails members and frequent Fincher collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, were tasked with creating the score using only period-authentic instruments. Again, this furthers serves the ultimate goal of crafting a narrative dedicated to the feelings of the past. The visual style must be accompanied by the sound. And it pays off. The score is a delight bringing back memories and images from history.
But Mank doesn't rely on the past to tell its story. Fincher and his team straddle a line between two eras of Hollywood. It is an homage to the past, but it is crafted in a distinctly modern way. While the film is in many ways imitating the style of the classics, Mank never limits itself to the past. It borrows the aesthetics of the classics but is not constrained by them. The cinematography may be inspired by films like Casablanca and Citizen Kane, it was shot in radically different ways. Messerschmidt and Fincher shot the film on digital at 8K - a far cry from the filmstock of history.
The film then uses this distinction between the past and present to offer a critique of history through the eyes of its protagonist, Herman Mankiewicz, played by the phenomenal Gary Oldman. There's this term popularized by writer Nathanael West in his novel The Day of the Locust which describes the way Hollywood saw itself in the 30s and 40s: the dream factory. While the world was falling apart during this twenty-year period from the Great Depression and then the Second World War, Hollywood suffered marginally. It offered an escape to the masses from their crushing realities. The dream factory - the land of mass-market fantasy.
Citizen Kane is the story of an overly ambitious man who rises to extraordinary power at a young age. Ultimately, Kane lets that power corrupt him and causes his great fall. It's a tragedy we all know well. Mank is concerned with these ideas of power and weakness. Maybe the great power of the rich is frail and fragile with no substance on which it can hold itself together. Maybe the dream factory is just that - a dream with no substance. Maybe Mankiewicz's absurd, drunken behaviour is closest anyone comes to sobriety.
Mank is a film in opposition to the self-congratulations of the Hollywood industry. One of Hollywood's favourite subjects is themselves. If not themselves, then other artists and creators - dancers, musicians, playwrights, and painters. They love to applaud their own ideas and their own likenesses. Mank attempts to crack open that world of self-entitled attitudes. Mankiewicz is a pessimist like all of Fincher's characters. He comes with a negative view of the world in which he has embedded himself so deeply. He's a contradiction. A drunken screenwriter dissatisfied with the world around him, yet cannot bring himself to leave it. He works only for a paycheque.
The film then makes the viewer aware of the contrast in Hollywood. There are the powerful, rich, conservative executives who rake in millions of dollars a year and become some of America's richest men. Then there are those who work beneath them. They struggle just to get by. The political leaders of the underclass are laughed at and jeered at. The story ends in the pessimism it began with. The working class are just as disenfranchised as they always were. The Mankiewicz can do is funnel these ideas into a film.
In the end, we don't really understand Mankiewicz. How could we? Mankiewicz was a complex man whose life could not be captured in two hours. The best we can hope for is the impression of a life. So little of the film is dedicated to Citizen Kane. Orson Welles exists only as a background player, portrayed Tom Burke, as a vague incentive for Mankiewicz to continue his work. Yet, Mank drips in the influence of Citizen Kane; the two films become nearly inseparable.
Mank is a fantastic portrait of a man in the centre of the Hollywood of the past - the Hollywood we owe much to set is no hero. Fincher is the right man for the job. Under the fanciful anachronistic aesthetics is the story of a sad man. Thought a brilliant storyteller, he is left unsatisfied by the world around him. Maybe it means nothing in the end. With its brilliant performances and entrancing visual style, Mank cannot be missed. It offers thought for the mind and a delight for the senses.
Score: 4
Mank is now streaming on Netflix.
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