2020 In Review: Mank

A bunch of old mooks chatter about film and politics during 1940s black & white Hollywood

(and if that's not your thing, then godspeed)


* * * * *


 When David Fincher walked away from a potential third season of Mindhunter (and might never return) so that he could make a movie about the guy who co-wrote Citizen Kane, and would shoot the film to look exactly like the 1941 Best Screenplay winner, folks who were not diehard cinephiles were pissed. Hell, even the cinephiles were pissed. Mindhunter was a great show! So of course while watching Mank, it will be inevitable though difficult to separate bitter feelings of personal betrayal in order to enjoy Fincher's latest deep dive into roaring 1930s Hollywood, mostly because watching Mank is like getting a root canal for 131-minutes, but when the dentist shows you how good your mouth looks, it's easy to agree with his egregiously tedious yet stunning work.

Mank is pure cinema-porn, and the black & white filmic epitome of the phrase "it is what it is," which sounds about fitting for the quarantined poop-chute that made up for most of 2020. There are many absolutes with Mank; It is an undeniably lush and gorgeous portrayal of Hollywood during a bygone era, where big-wig executives shouted demands at one another and chewed on their cigars "in the name of cinema!" The production quality of these costumes and sets are so finely chiseled that Gary Oldman (Herman Mankiewicz) can boast about political interference tantalizing the art of cinema(!), and Amanda Seyfriend (Marion Davies) can be as dolled up as a live action Betty Boop and will still probably walk away with an Oscar nom at the very least (real life cinema!). These aren't opinions, folks, they're cold hard facts. Mank is a dazzling and dreamy display of black & white Hollywood in the same vein of La La Land jazzing its hypnotic tap-dancing shoes through a vibrant and Broadway-inspired Hollywood. It's all Hollywood; a gushing homage to Hollywood, and that will of course rub folks the right or wrong way. "Good" or "bad," it is what it is.

Like shouting for an Oscar from the socially-distanced mountain tops, Mank sort of feels like the snobbish kid in class who wrote a detailed essay about the teacher being their favorite thing about school, while the other kids wrote about recess and French bread pizza. It's respectable, but also utter brown-nosing. That's not to say Mank isn't still a hell of an essay. With beautifully lit sets closed out with old-school fading techniques, Tom Burke doing a spot-on Orson Welles, Seyfried's best performance yet, a raging commentary on politics, cinema (!), and the art of disgruntled visionaries, and of course a drunkenly aggressive finale that will linger and inspire, Fincher boasts himself a true cinematic wizard with one of his finest looking pictures to date. When the biggest gripe with the film is Gary Oldman pretending to play a 42-year-old, there's really not much negativity to take away, despite how "boring" most Netflix users will declare it.


Grade: A-

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