Black & White, stunning tribute to the history/movies, frickin biopic, plus David Fincher; dont know a better Academy bait
(From left) Gary Oldman, Arliss Howard and Tom Pelphrey in Mank
Here's the thing about Citizen Kane (1941). Not too many people outside of film aficionados have seen it. They've always had the chance/choice to. Yet, everybody sure as hell knows it's the 'greatest movie' ever made. Why's that? Chiefly for the advances achieved in craft/technique — both cinema wise, and in its storytelling.
Except, cinema itself advances so quickly that watching a work for its historical value seldom holds back sleep for those inclined to more cut-to-cut, fast-paced entertainment. Without context, it only makes you question its anointed greatness. Or so I once sadly discovered hosting a screening of Citizen Kane in a classroom full of bored media students.
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What about David Fincher's Mank (2020)? Well, the first thing that strikes you is how little, or any at all, you see of the director Orson Welles in a film that is ostensibly on the making of Citizen Kane! Which is fair, because it really is the story of Herman J Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) on how he came to write Kane. Which, in turn, was inspired by the life of William Randolph Hearst — a media mogul so huge, that he could make and break governments.
How relevant is Hearst himself? You've heard of yellow journalism as pejorative for sensationalism in news media? That term comes from a battle for eyeballs between Joseph Pulitzer's paper New York World and Hearst's New York Journal — named after the cartoon character Yellow Kid, that appeared in both!
The backdrop for Mank is the ongoing elections for California's governor. And how Hollywood, under the watch of studio bosses like Luis B Meyer, and on the pay of Hearst, had been shamelessly co-opted to push a party line — through what would now be called a disinformation campaign, or "fake news". Sense parallels?
Speaking of Meyer, Hearst, it's just incredible to spot the add-on cast of characters in every studio room in Mank, who make for a history of Hollywood — writers Ben Hecht, Sid Perelman, Mank's brother Joe, top producers Irving Thalberg, David O Selznick...
What would the role of the writer in Hollywood of the '40s be like — very much then as now, the most capitalistic, therefore feudal, of arts? Is the significance slightly exaggerated, because Mank in the eponymous movie is, after all, screenwriter Mankiewicz?
Or would the writer's role not have automatically, even if temporarily, elevated itself, with Hollywood still transitioning from silent cinema? In talkies, you would need some literary flourish/imagination for characters that must now talk? Either way, it is evident that Hearst liked Mank for his company. This love was clearly not mutual — because of political concerns, rather than personal taste.
What would a major media baron anyway have in common with a totally "washed up", alcoholic screenwriter — later forced into confinement, so he can finish a script? There's a lovely "old grinder's monkey" parable that Hearst quotes to show Mank his place. Mank, in turn, does a hit job on Hearst, that became Citizen Kane — undoubtedly, a piece of both cinema and history. Indeed, Hearst's surviving legacy.
This raises the question of ethics/integrity over how much a fiction writer can lift from those living around him — without the lack of kindness becoming a collateral damage, in the case of few others?
For instance, Hearst's warm mistress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), who's also Mank's friend/source, if you may. This screenplay — original draft written by Fincher's late father Jack — about a screenplay, essentially alternates between the screenwriter's world, and the words/scenes/characters they inspired.
The bigger question among certain movie buffs was if the film would take sides between Mank and his director Welles. Which is what film critic Pauline Kael famously did in the former's favour — in a 1971 New Yorker essay titled Raising Kane, raising quite a storm, then, I'm told.
There is much said about how Fincher's masterpiece Fight Club (1999), for instance, was deeply misunderstood, because it ended up making Tyler Durden and therefore the violence in the movie really cool. Just as Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987) was a critique, rather than about how 'greed is good'; likewise, Martin Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
The point with Mank is: You barely see the 24-year-old wonder-kid Welles in the movie. So there's no question of taking sides — as much as it is about showing just one. Yes, Welles and Mank did fight over writing credit. They shared it. And it's the only Oscar the 'greatest movie' ever won.
Legend has it that such was Hearst's hold over Hollywood that Citizen Kane was entirely ignored at the Academy Awards. Heard of How Green Was My Valley? That was Best Picture in the year of Kane!
Mank, on Kane, has for Oscar baits David Fincher, plus Black & White film (recall Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List; Alfonso Cuaron's Roma, also produced by Netflix), which is also totally biographical (Academy's favourite genre). That it should grab golden statuettes, given its subject alone, would be poetic justice!
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper
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