Review: Review: The Impression of Herman J. Mankiewicz in David Fincher’s ‘Mank’
“Write the story you know.”
Within the black and white frames and compressed monaural audio tracks of David Fincher’s Mank, there is an impression of a one Herman J. Mankiewicz that is unshakable. The New Yorker critic turned screenwriter left his mark wherever he went in Hollywood, often evidenced by empty liquor bottles and contentious disputes, but no one contribution was so monumental as that of his screenplay for Citizen Kane, his last script and his most important one.
Expectations for Mank are understandably high. It’s Fincher’s first feature in six years and the script, written by Fincher’s father Jack, has been sitting on his shelf since Alien3. Serial killers, sadists, ego-driven billionaires, and cool girls tend to characterize Fincher films, but this is notably less seedy than prior efforts. This is about Mankiewicz at the crossroads of upheaval politics, movie making, and his own accord, and what that might mean for a man with something to prove.
Fincher’s films have little fat. He likes air tight narratives with functional scenes that propel the narrative forward, but this isn’t that. This is an amalgam of present day binges paired against mirages of the past thrown into a blender and served with a technical perfectionism to help it all go down. The result isn’t palatable off the bat, and it’s quite un-Fincher, but given his uncompromising nature, the thirty-years-in-development script, and the generous bank account of Reed Hasting, it feels like Fincher is experimenting with creating the impression of a man over linear event driven narrative.
Much of the film sees Mankiewicz, played by Gary Oldman, on the opposite end of the bottle writing a feature for Orson Welles under the gun of a sixty day deadline in the Mojave desert. Stitched in are events that prelude Mankiewicz’ writing retreat, creating a patchwork quilt of Mankiewicz and the consortium that inspired his script. Big time players like MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, hot shot producer Irving Thalberg, man of industry and Charles Foster Kane incarnate William Randolph Hearst, and Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies —played ineffably by the great Amanda Seyfried — color and shape Mankiewicz’ experience in 1930s Hollywood. The sum effect of these events, people, and their interactions forge a characteristic relief of Mankiewicz more than anything else.
In the secondary, Fincher pulls in a political subplot. The 1934 gubernatorial campaign run of muckraker Upton Sinclair and establishment Republican Frank Merriam would seem like something outside the realm of Hollywood until you learn that the circle Mankiewicz hung out with helped push the election in Merriam’s favor. Mayer and Hearst piled on political propaganda against Sinclair, using the studio arm of MGM to manufacture untruths about a progressive trying to amend Depression-era America, while Mankiewicz stood quietly in opposition. At the same time, the ascent of Hitler textures the historical events in Mank, cropping up in small talk between big wigs like Mayer and Hearst to showcase their immoral indifference to the rise of anti-semitism.
In all this history Fincher makes numerous assertions, including, but not limited to, the character of his subjects, the political nature of said characters, and their deviancy in Hollywood, of which I unfortunately cannot profess complete historical expertise in every category. A field day for the well informed, the dialog is largely characterized by a dizzying array of textbook footnotes, bringing equal parts elation when your Citizen Kane bar trivia gets dropped mid-conversation and void-less confusion when you realize you’ve come to school not having done your homework on the politics of MGM in the 1930s. For the average viewer this unfortunately is not.
However, the most contentious historical issue Fincher takes aim at is a well documented and known debate: who deserved writing credit for Citizen Kane? For decades historians and scholars have engaged in fervent debate on the matter, with legendary film critic Pauline Kael stoking the fire most infamously in 1971. Though it has been determined that Welles had influence, Fincher adds another log to the flame by arguing and asserting that Mankiewicz deserves sole credit.
Welles is intentionally minimized, often voiced offscreen and depicted in fragments. The film isn’t called Welles for good reason as Fincher makes abundantly clear by way of screen time and his closing arguments. Consistently, the film itself features a script with sole posthumous writing credit given to Fincher’s father even though he himself and producer Eric Roth made editing passes. By Fincher’s summation, it’s the individual who draws the blueprint, not the one who materializes the product, who owns it. Fincher’s determination is not only a commentary on the long-deliberated authorship debate in movie making, but also a revisionist mark on a man’s life and work.
Like Citizen Kane, the film is round about in its narrative, modulating between time periods as indicated by fades to black with typewriter inter-title cards clearly labeling “(FLASHBACK)” — the dudes who couldn’t understand the structure of Little Women will surely appreciate this distinction. Shaken and stirred, these fragments of Mankiewicz’ life are presented in a perplexing order until you realize chronological order isn’t conducive to Fincher’s intent.
Early on in the film, Fincher spells this out with tongue in cheek self reference. “All in all, it’s a bit of a jumble… a hodgepodge of talkie episodes, a collection of fragments that leap around in time like Mexican jumping beans,” says MGM producer John Houseman after reading a draft of Kane. True. With all the visions in time, one can rightfully claim there is no focus to Mank, just opaque dart throwing without a finite thesis. But to that Fincher also responds in self-reference, as Mankiewicz says, “The narrative is one big circle like a cinnamon roll. Not a straight line pointing to the nearest exit. You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours. All you can do is leave the impression of one.” And with Mank we get just that.
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