Mank (2020)
Directed by David Fincher
1930s Hollywood is reevaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane.
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Still, those looking for backstage drama, maybe something more akin to Herman's brother Joe's All About Eve , will be disappointed.
Mank's life is artfully sketched in as older brother to "All About Eve" writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (an outstanding Tom Pelphrey) and the father of three with "poor Sara" (Tuppence Middleton), the wife who must put up with his "suicidal drinking, compulsive gambling and silly, platonic affairs."
For those who know nothing of the man, his legacy, or his equally prolific family members (including younger brother Joseph L. Mankiewicz, screenwriter and eventual director of All About Eve , Suddenly , Last Summer and Cleopatra ), the script does a fine job of formatting his idealism and eventual nihilism of the scribe.
And his kid brother, Joe, who directed and wrote “All About Eve,” would go on to be the better-known Mankiewicz.
As time went on his reputation was eclipsed by his kid brother, Joseph L., who as a writer, director and producer would helm some of the most distinguished movies of the mid-century: “All About Eve,” “Guys and Dolls,” “A Letter to Three Wives,” “Julius Caesar,” “The Quiet American,” etc.
His relationships with his brother Joseph (the much more successful movie director behind “All About Eve” played here by Tom Pelphrey), and with fellow screenwriter Charles Lederer (who essentially invented the screwball comedy and is played here Joseph Cross) provide additional pieces to the puzzle of the mercurial man and the tumultuous age in Tinsel Town.
Shot in black-and-white, it nods to Hollywood tradition without direct imitation: Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, Fincher’s collaborator on Gone Girl and the TV series Mindhunter , echoes the deep focus of Citizen Kane ’s cinematography and occasionally quotes a shot, but softens the blacks and greys, and frames the film in modern wide-screen.
Even a director as lauded as David Fincher — he of the Zodiac s and Social Network s and Gone Girl s, the Oscar nods and Emmys and Golden Globes — only really comes at Citizen Kane sideways in the loose biopic Mank , due in select theaters Nov. 13 and on Netflix Dec. 4.
David Fincher, the shrewd technician behind grim amazements like Gone Girl and Zodiac , doesn’t often show his softer side.
Working off a script credited to his late father, Jack Fincher (who passed away in 2003), the Zodiac and Gone Girl filmmaker takes a deep dive into the ego driven nature of Hollywood, with the production of the long argued “greatest film of all time” at its centre.
For director David Fincher ("The Social Network," "Gone Girl"), "Mank" is a passion project that allows him to thrillingly recreate Hollywood's Golden Age and resurrect a long-dormant script written by his journalist father, Jack Fincher, who died in 2003.
True to form, Fincher’s first film since 2014’s Gone Girl isn’t a gooey-eyed Valentine to the dream factory.
Mank feels the same way about Hollywood as David Robert Mitchell's Under the Silver Lake, admiring its glamorous legacy while acknowledging that something poisonous lies beneath.