No, I don't mean the lead character, genius screenwriter Herman Jacob "Mank" Mankiewicz--although it fits him the same--but Fincher's very movie. This film throws its English degree in your face and if you can't handle its rainfall then you shall be doomed to frustration.
In any case, though, frustration arises. Depicting the arduous and chaotic process that is the writing of the script for "Citizen Kane" made Fincher rub off the movie's attitude by slicing "Mank" into various pieces not necessarily in chronological order. It feels pretentious and exaggerated. Herman J. Mankiewicz is no Charles Foster Kane and, respectfully, Gary Oldman is no Orson Welles (although his performance arises to the man's depiction of Kane). This ambitious undertaking is still the movie throwing its smarts around, the only problem is that here it fails.
But everything is not chaos, not even close. The movie's main plot line involves Mank isolated at North Verde Ranch in Victorville, California recovering from a broken leg sustained in a car crash. There, Welles has removed any distractions including Mank's favorite poison, alcohol so that he may create arguably the greatest scrip ever written. Over arguments with his secretary, Rita Alexander to which he dictates the script, we also see clips of his past life, slowly, methodically and surely understanding how he became to be in that position.
Between alcohol and his platonic relationships, Mank rubs shoulders with Hollywood made men of the golden age like Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg and William Randolph Hearst. Fincher is well aware of the moment in Hollywood he is capturing. The movie has a Hitchcockian feel to it, its jazz-inspired style, cabaret-paced bebop speed encapsulates the business model of Hollywood and the importance of literary men to make it work. A particular scene in which the likes of David O. Selznick and Ben Hecht all introduce themselves to the screen a-la Scorsese carries quite the gravitas.
"Mank" contains multitudes, so many in fact that they disrupt the main story of the ramshackle genius that is its title character. Yet by the end, it all comes together. Especially Mank's heartbreaking yet beautiful confession on his obsession with alcohol which also brought him his end: "I seem to become more and more of a rat in a trap of my own construction, a trap that I regularly repair whenever there seems to be danger of some opening that will enable me to escape. I haven't decided yet about making it bomb proof. It would seem to involve a lot of unnecessary labor and expense".
In any case, though, frustration arises. Depicting the arduous and chaotic process that is the writing of the script for "Citizen Kane" made Fincher rub off the movie's attitude by slicing "Mank" into various pieces not necessarily in chronological order. It feels pretentious and exaggerated. Herman J. Mankiewicz is no Charles Foster Kane and, respectfully, Gary Oldman is no Orson Welles (although his performance arises to the man's depiction of Kane). This ambitious undertaking is still the movie throwing its smarts around, the only problem is that here it fails.
But everything is not chaos, not even close. The movie's main plot line involves Mank isolated at North Verde Ranch in Victorville, California recovering from a broken leg sustained in a car crash. There, Welles has removed any distractions including Mank's favorite poison, alcohol so that he may create arguably the greatest scrip ever written. Over arguments with his secretary, Rita Alexander to which he dictates the script, we also see clips of his past life, slowly, methodically and surely understanding how he became to be in that position.
Between alcohol and his platonic relationships, Mank rubs shoulders with Hollywood made men of the golden age like Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg and William Randolph Hearst. Fincher is well aware of the moment in Hollywood he is capturing. The movie has a Hitchcockian feel to it, its jazz-inspired style, cabaret-paced bebop speed encapsulates the business model of Hollywood and the importance of literary men to make it work. A particular scene in which the likes of David O. Selznick and Ben Hecht all introduce themselves to the screen a-la Scorsese carries quite the gravitas.
"Mank" contains multitudes, so many in fact that they disrupt the main story of the ramshackle genius that is its title character. Yet by the end, it all comes together. Especially Mank's heartbreaking yet beautiful confession on his obsession with alcohol which also brought him his end: "I seem to become more and more of a rat in a trap of my own construction, a trap that I regularly repair whenever there seems to be danger of some opening that will enable me to escape. I haven't decided yet about making it bomb proof. It would seem to involve a lot of unnecessary labor and expense".