Mank

Watched at the Ritz Cinema, Sydney, where it is now playing.

* * * *

I am the target audience for Mank, David Fincher’s Netflix-funded production of his dad Jack Fincher’s screenplay about Herman “Mank” Mankiewicz, a “screenwriter’s screenwriter” who won an Oscar for Citizen Kane. This film covers Mank (Gary Oldman) during the writing of that script, with flashbacks to his earlier Hollywood career and its intersection with Citizen Kane subjects William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies.

I’m the target audience all right: earlier this year, I read Sydney Ladensohn Stern’s 480-page biography of Mank and his brother Joseph, The Brothers Mankiewicz; I’ve read more books about Orson Welles, Citizen Kane’s director (and a minor character in this film by screen time but a major one by impact) than about anyone else; I’ve even read John Houseman’s books about working with Welles, and Houseman is a major character in this film no matter how you gauge it. I love the golden age of Hollywood; I love these (real-life) characters; I love films about films. This film was meant for me, and I loved it.

Will you? Hard to say. But there’s more on Fincher and daddy Fincher’s minds than just a Hollywood story. Mank’s desire to write a classic film about the media mogul of his day – Hearst – reflects his growing realisation that realpolitik trumps idealism, and Mank is really a political film, striking out at propaganda, electioneering and fake news. Its vibe is old-timey – more on that in a moment – but it’s actually very timely.

Fincher has shot the film so that it looks, sounds, feels and smells like it was made at the time Citizen Kane was: the early 1940s. It’s a startling experience. From the contrast of the black and white images, to the (simulated, I suppose) grain of the film, to the period-appropriate fade-outs, to the fun inclusion of cue blips – those strange circles in the upper right corner of the screen that appear in old movies to alert the projectionist to a reel change – Fincher and his cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt nail the aesthetic of the period, and the sound design follows suit. But there’s more to the film’s 1941faux-verisimilitude: the screenplay itself is constructed as it might have been then, and thus is it acted. Every actor in the film is, essentially, giving the performance they would have given in 1941, before the naturalistic ‘method’ stormed in. The whole enterprise is highly stylised, and it totally works. Once you’re in – a process that took mere minutes for me – you’re in. The style remains but it’s never an obstacle, obstruction nor irritant: form follows function, beautifully.

All that clever acting is excellent acting, too. Gary Oldman makes Mank a gloriously happy alcoholic, steering clear of many of the type’s trappings. It’s not a flashy performance but a stable one, Mank as hero of his own story, which he was. This is not a take-down, and Oldman’s performance is not a grotesque: he, and the film, like Mank, and so do we. He’s talented, generous, idealistic and, most importantly, true to himself, something recognised in him by others.

Amanda Seyfried delivers a career-best performance as Davies, Hearst’s young mistress. Charles Dance plays Hearst not as a monster but simply a master – of his domain, of men, of his mistress – and subverts our sympathies in the process. There are fine performance from Arliss Howard as Louis B. Mayer, Sam Troughton as Houseman, and Tom Burke, from The Souvenir, as Welles. But the character sharing the most scenes with Mank is Rita, a young woman employed to attend to him – and keep an eye on him – as he writes Kane; she’s played by Lily Collins, superbly. She’s Emily in Paris, too, but I’ll take Rita in Victorville, where she and Mank co-exist.

Mank is one of the films of the year. It’s surprisingly gentle, loving, calm and graceful. It takes you to another world. Five hours after leaving the cinema, I’m still kind of there. It’s my happy place, and Mank is, for me, a feel-good movie, one made like they used to.