Review: "Mank" is a Distracting Messy Homage

Scene from Mank

No matter who you are, there's a good chance somebody at least once has told you that Citizen Kane is one of the greatest movies ever made. The mythology surrounding it has only ballooned in the near 80 years since its release, finding director Orson Welles being considered a filmmaking pioneer who took down Hearst with this swift commentary of greed and corruption. While history has been favorable, there are those like director David Fincher who want to posit that Welles wasn't the mastermind behind this story. There was one man in particular named Herman J. Mankiewicz - a studio savant who navigated the studio system in the 1930s before making this screenplay that changed the world. 

It's a juicy enough hook for Fincher to apply his familiar hostile view of humanity to. After all, who doesn't love an underdog story, where history can be rewritten to immortalize the real heroes? The issue with Mank isn't so much what it intends to achieve, but that it does so in a bit of a clumsy way. Based on a screenplay written by his father Jack Fincher, it's a story that glamorizes early Hollywood with endless references and pastiches that help to explore the "movie magic" concept. However, there's little else going on here that feels essential. For a story about writing a universally acclaimed hit, it sure lacks the payoff that could make this into a modern masterpiece. It's a bit of a misfire, finding Fincher giving too much into sentimentalism that clouds his technique, keeping the story from ever meeting its full potential.

When the audience meets Mankiewicz, he's on his way to a hotel on the outskirts of Southern California. He's considered this genius, knowledgable on the value of prose (he even recites iambic pentameter and Miguel De Cervantes from memory). There's plenty of reason to think that he has all of this talent, a perfect understanding of how structure impacts a screenplay. He starts the story in a bit of a sorry state, sporting a bandaged leg and a secretly supply of booze that helps the ideas to flow. With the partnership of Welles, himself a wunderkind in the theater world, he is assigned to write what will become Citizen Kane while his secretary is given dictation. 

Fincher seems obsessed with making this narrative device as tragic as it can be. Here is this injured man, isolated from the world, and his only outlet is drinking. He is sometimes days behind with his page count, and yet he insists that he's a genius. Everyone there suggests that he has a good heart, and yet there is something narcissistic about him. His alcoholism is excused because of what he's done in his past. As one can guess, he does eventually come out with something brilliant, but the question quickly becomes why. Why would Fincher want this to be Mankiewicz's big break to mainstream audiences? He may have written a masterpiece, but he's such a beaten-down man by this point even to the point of physical injury. Why is this where the story wants to build around? 

That's the thing. Mank wants to be about a genius, but he rarely feels that way. Maybe it's accurate to the real man, but one has to believe that there's more to his life than this sorry state. While the flashbacks help to provide context for why he feels beaten down, practically living a Hollywood version of Citizen Kane, the big finale is a whimper, built on spite he's developed for Welles: a character that barely functions in the narrative. Sure, it suggests that Welles got rich off of Mankiewicz's misery, but that can't be the only reason he deserves more respect. As it stands, it ends without any deeper point other than that Mankiewicz was a very sad alcoholic, abused by a system that he once felt at home in.

With that said, it's difficult to think that this is the only way to parallel Mankiewicz's grand finale with his glory days. Why is it so difficult to find Mankiewicz having any success or clarity that makes his struggle to write a screenplay more rewarding? While Fincher has created a meticulous set design, it all feels like filler. Maybe that's part of the point, that Hollywood is artificial and fake. However, Mank never feels like it has any authenticity even within this. As a film trying to pay homage to the 1940s dramas that played alongside Citizen Kane, it never feels more substantial. The digital photography lacks the grain, the roughness that comes with the sound design. It merely uses this technique to convey something unearned. The lighting may convey the noir well enough, but otherwise, the style feels false even as it tries to convey the allure. If nothing else, the performances also never ring true enough to the atmosphere to compensate for that.

Also, the usually reliable Fincher composers Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross fail to make any of the auditory elements feel substantial. While it plays as a homage to Bernard Herrmann's work, it doesn't add anything organic to the film. They're chintzy melodies that sound goofy, providing brief personality moments that are fun, but doesn't keep the atmosphere alive long enough. It's one of the few times that their 21st century aesthetic fails, longing for something resembling recurring motifs. Maybe if Reznor and Atticus were as widespread in their musical references as the screenplay, they could've pulled from others like Max Steiner or Franz Waxman to help convey Mankiewicz's internal struggle on a more abundant level. As it stands, there's nothing here that works on an implicit level, failing to get the audience into any mood for this story.

Again, Fincher could be using this all to comment on Hollywood's artifice, eventually making Mankiewicz into this true iconoclast. However, the moments that genuinely shine through as technically impressive are few and far between. Whenever he uses visual motifs reflective of the era, the film shines a bit. There's use of cigarette burns and blackouts that give the sense of what this could've been. Even the trite use of screenplay text across the bottom to convey period was the start of a good idea. It's just that like the music and cinematography it all feels like a novelty. Nothing about this film feels like it benefits from being shot this way. If anything, Mank would make more sense as an homage if he was writing something like The Long Weekend, where his perpetual alcoholism that grinds most of the story to a halt actually informed the subtext.

This is a shame because there is a decent idea in this film. In fact, the supporting cast all have their own interesting lives that suggest that the flashbacks could've been given full-story treatment, reordering things so that the audience isn't entirely reminded of Mankiewicz's late in life flaws. There are ideas that should work, but it all feels like a celebration instead of a commentary, contradicting Mankiewicz's later resentment of his career. Enough is understood because Gary Oldman gives a decent enough performance, but there's nothing exemplary here that pops with organic life. This could be better if the audience got to see the stories that Mank alluded to, such as helping people get American Visas, but instead, they're just watching this man in his autumn years fail to get any respect. It's a tired premise and one that never feels like it does more than seeks pity on this guy with some pretty good ideas.

As a whole, everything feels like a novelty, distracting from any greater substance underneath. There's a good story to be had with Mankiewicz's endless frustration with Welles and the studio system. It's hinted at with his various "Don Quixote" references. Instead, it's given a few scenes towards the end that would feel more triumphant with a better screenplay, where the struggle felt more earned. As it stands, the flashbacks barely feel resourceful because it's mostly star-gazing while questioning if Hearst is capable of being attacked in film. Given that Citizen Kane was infamously blackballed at The Oscars that year because of this, it's disappointing how little time this film gives any event beyond the first draft process, any rebuttal that could make this struggle feel more substantial.

Mank is easily among Fincher's least interesting works, which is a shame. Given his technical achievements in films like The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's plenty of hope that he could've made something that had the searing pain of those films, but presented through a Hollywood lens. Given that the 1940s were rich with heartbreaking noirs, it wouldn't be too off to make it feel more authentic. Instead, it feels too much like a 2020 look back at an era, demanding name recognition at every turn just to appease cinephiles. There's enough that works to make it watchable, but it's full of distracting techniques on narrative, visual, and audio levels that it fails to be greater. Even how it says that Mankiewicz is a genius feels a bit undercooked. If anything, those supporting characters he willfully ignores should've been given more time to talk (as was the case with supporting players in Citizen Kane). Then maybe the homage would be reaching for something greater and worthwhile than what Mank gives us.