MANK by David Fincher
Mank or the 2nd movie in 2020 by a fav director you’d have to watch at least twice to understand.. or love. Although let’s be honest, you don’t have to watch Mank twice. You just have to know the characters, backstory, have seen Citizen Kane (and loved it) and be fascinated about old Hollywood and its tales.
Ok, so I started watching Mank. 10 minutes in — my head was hurting, 30 minutes in — I wanted to sleep. I wasn’t getting the hang of it. I didn’t know who these people were. Was I supposed to? This all happened 90 years ago goddamnit! And Citizen Kane, although I watched and loved— was a long lost memory to me by now. If anyone’s wondering, Mank’s a story about the creation of Citizen Kane — a Hollywood classic. Half asleep I understood that if I keep watching Mank I’m gonna give it a bad review (from a perspective of an average consumer which I was and who forgot Citizen Kane and didn’t know about these characters) as I gave an average to bad review for Tenet (from the perspective of someone who just saw it once). I stopped the movie.. and turned on Citizen Kane for a rewatch. I did that. Then I read Indiwire’s Deep Dive Article on Mank, it’s characters, the story, the real people, the parallels. Then I read more about these people. And only after I resumed Mank..mmm.. I mean started from the beginning.
Now it’s a different story. Now it’s great. Amanda Seyfried’s acting was unbelievably phenomenal as Marion Davies — a woman, whose genitalia supposedly inspired the iconic phrase “Rosebud” from Citizen Kane. She’ll get an Oscar for this. If Oscar takes place of course 😂. Gary Oldman is fantastic, it’s just Amanda’s a revelation. When you watch Mank knowing what it’s all about you’re gonna love it. If Tarantino directed a film that was supposed to be an ode of love to Hollywood last year, Fincher directed an ode of hatred & anger to Hollywood. And honestly, I sympathize with Fincher more. There are lots of parallels to the events that are happening now in America but if you watch closely, it’s not Fincher, it’s just the history really repeating itself. Human beings are extremely repetitional and predictable. Don’t we just love a little power play? We do.
Interesting trivia — only a Black and White version of this film exists and they downgraded the 8K quality multiple times, had cigarette burns and all that on the tape to mimic the 1930s effect. They also twitched the sound to make it like they used to make sound in the 1930s. It really does have that weird echo-y notes. I watched Citizen Kane and Mank back-to-back. They really do seem to be made a couple of months apart. Partly because Citizen Kane was so much ahead of its time and partly because Mank has so well mimicked everything that represents the 1930s Hollywood.
Mank’s a damn good movie but is it worth the trouble of knowing this much background info, caring about old Hollywood, and watching it multiple times to appreciate it? I doubt it. Partly because at least Nolan’s trick of making Tenet so complicated you had to watch twice brought money to the struggling theatres while making Mank complicated & in need to watch more than once just stuffs Netflix’s pockets. And Partly because why would an average consumer do so much homework just to understand a picture? That’s absurd. And I stand both for average consumers and struggling theatres.
XOXO, Luss