DATSKO
Middle Brow Movie Review: Mank (2020)
Middle Brow Movie Review: Mank (2020)
Mank, written by the late Jack Fincher and directed by David Fincher, credits Herman Mankiewicz with creating the structure and tone of Citizen Kane (1941).
If the premise sounds dry, that’s only because I shared the boring part of the log line. “Mank” (played by Gary Oldman) is, according to the rest of the blurb, a “scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter,” and the film deftly slakes some thirsts while stoking others.
I love sharp dialogue in general, and the banter in Mank really moves. The whole picture moves. It jumps forth and back in time, a bit like Kane. The b&w visuals are dynamic and sharp. More importantly, Mank is a character always sparring with adversaries he’s apt enough to recognize but not powerful enough to vanquish.
And he’s almost always sloshed.
He drinks and cracks wise like he’s doing double duty as both Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man, 1934). If you are a viewer already inclined to sink under a weight of your own making, this film could be a grand choice. I found myself wanting a bottle of scotch and maybe a pack (or two) of Chesterfields instead of the White Claw and corn chips that were sitting on my coffee table.
Mank’s use of booze and the wit are just symptoms, though. Even his most incisive attacks on others serve to deepen already-profound self-inflected wounds. Like George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe (1966), Mank seems to carry more pain, or carry it less well, than do the handful of people he keeps in steady but distant orbit.
Rather than highlight those wounds, though, Fincher barely alludes to Mank’s hurt through much of the film, and his drinking borders on the comical.
If there’s a message here about the danger of self-medicating, Oldman holding court on a porch in southern California is about as dire a warning as Leonardo DiCaprio’s stoned, naked, and sex-satiated Wolf of Wall Street (2013) casually soaking-in the lights of the city.
Of course, there’s some comeuppance for Mankiewicz, but who among the presumed target audience doesn’t want to be this guy, at least a little?
He’s a glib and frumpish gladiator in a world heavy with machismo and money.
He’ll best Orson Welles at the height of his powers and script a film whose popularity has already outlived that of Louis B. Mayer, Pops Hearst, and maybe even Welles himself.
And the picture is so well-executed that, after just a few minutes’ envy of Gary Oldman’s skill, all I saw was Mankiewicz. And it was nineteen thirty-something. And I had my own screening room. The projector clacked away, and a boozy but adroit middle-aged father who thought his best days were behind him was about to say just the right thing.
Streams on Netflix