Mank

At this point in its young life, this blog is pretty much a friends and family enterprise … which means every voice counts. So thanks to a suggestion from Bernadette Walter, let's talk about “Mank.”

David Fincher directed Netflix's top Golden Globe contender to six nominations. Working from a script by his father Jack Fincher, he crafts a sun-drenched, wide-angle return to California in the '30s. It bounces from Hollywood's RKO Studios to William Randolph Hearst's opulent-beyond-belief castle, San Simeon, to pull back the curtain on the making of instant cinema classic, “Citizen Kane.”

Mank is the nickname of Herman Mankiewicz, who shared the screenwriting credit with director-star Orson Welles. At age 24, Welles (Tom Burke) was already being hailed as a genius auteur, despite having directed only one full-length picture. Oscar-winning chameleon Gary Oldman plays Mank, whose Shakespearean writing sensibilities and sardonic wit are never more than one step ahead of his alcoholism and all the other demons lurking in his mirror. Mank begins the movie on crutches, under a nurse's care. Someone else was driving the car in that accident; ordinarily, self-destruction is something he can attend to all by himself.

Shot in infinite shades of gray otherwise known as black and white, “Mank” pays homage to its period in every detail – the music; the opening credits scrolling over clouds in the sky; the typewriter-font headers that introduce each scene; the painstakingly recreated wardrobes; the snappy dialogue.

Welles' claim to fame at that point was having crafted the sci-fi radio drama “War of the Worlds” so ingeniously that many listeners across America thought its invasion from Mars was actually happening. 

For his big-screen debut, he and Mankiewicz zero in on another huge menace closer to home: newspaper publisher Hearst (Charles Dance). Basically the Rupert Murdoch of his day, Hearst built the biggest newspaper chain in the country, a yellow journalism empire capable of starting wars if they helped build circulation and further Hearst's conservative political agenda. 

His foray into the movie business was at least partially a way of transforming his mistress, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), from a blonde Brooklyn showgirl into a movie star.

Events in the background are as intriguing as the turbulent cross-country collaboration between Mank and Welles to create the screenplay on deadline. Socialist author Sinclair Lewis is running a formidable race for the California governorship at the time, and Hearst and his studio-head sycophants like Louis B. Meyer (Arliss Howard) are out to sandbag the election.

Then there's the world of Hollywood itself. Reacting to the antisemitism that seems to have been around basically as long as so-called Western Civilization has, the Jewish studio heads of that era were eager to prove themselves good Republican Americans. 

The screenwriters, in contrast, were like their feudal vassals, keeping their more leftist views to themselves. Mank was the exception, especially when fueled with alcohol, not afraid to shoot barbs at conservative targets. He was so damn clever and entertaining, Hearst often welcomed Mank to San Simeon's medieval-inspired dining hall, to play the court jester.

Marion Davies is the only one with any heart and soul in Hearst's architectural monument to himself. It even has a zoo among its gilded excesses. Ironically enough, she's also got a pretty good head on her shoulders under the ditsy blonde camouflage. She and Mank enjoy a unique  friendship and Seyfried more than earns the Oscar buzz she's getting for the role.

Today's filmmakers often choose futuristic sci-fi settings in which to examine the sociological terrain of their present-day world. By the same token, when film artists choose historical time frames, it's challenging for them to avoid superimposing current cultural views onto the material. 

“Mank” falls into that trap. Rather than feeling like we've learned what “really happened” in the making of “Citizen Kane ” – culminating in the pissing match between the cynical coward Mank and the megolomanical Welles over the writing credit – “Mank” feels like an exercise in spotting parallels with Trump era atrocities: The infantile, bottomless hunger for power for its own sake. The gold-plated fixtures trying to pass for genuine class. The early examples of media-created fake news to rig an election. The timeless appeal of socialism to blame for all of America's ills, in any era. In “Mank,” it all comes dressed up in snazzy '30s wardrobes.

So much for historical verisimilitude.

But if you want to know the true meaning of “Rosebud” – Citizen Kane's immortal last words on his deathbed – you'll have to see the movie.