This isn’t really about the authorship of ‘Citizen Kane’ or even a “biography” of its writer Herman Mankiewicz. Gary Oldman leaves us with one hell of an impression.
Spoilers ahead…
David Fincher’s Mank is about the man most famous today for having written (or co-written, depending on what you choose to believe) Citizen Kane — and the most fascinating aspect of the film is how little it concerns itself with Citizen Kane. This is not about a convalescent man (an alcoholic, a gambler) wrestling with his inner demons while writing a screenplay. (“Why do you put up with me,” he keeps asking his wife.) This is not about a Hollywood screenwriter battling it out with a “boy wonder” director. (Tom Burke plays Orson Welles, and the voice, the intonations are perfect.) The scene settings are typed out like in an actual script (“EXT: Victorville”), and we do get a few “this real-life incident might have led to that scene in the movie” parallels — the production of a “fake” newsreel, a moonlit stroll through the grounds of an estate with an actual zoo — but Mank isn’t about the creative process, either.
Read the rest of this article at the link above.
Copyright ©2020 Film Companion.
Baradwaj Rangan 
Sai Raja
December 5, 2020
Welles is called “Boy Genius”and not Boy Wonder which was used for Irving Thalberg, the MGM producer
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KayKay
December 5, 2020
And…..I’ll say any year which gives me a new Nolan and a new Fincher cannot be a total write off.
Even this one
Can’t wait to see this
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Thupparivaalan
December 8, 2020
Ah, yes the mandatory end of the decade masterpiece from Fincher. Beautifully written, directed and performed, Fincher reveals his empathetic mellow self in this one. He is operating in the peak of his powers here, and the man can do no wrong.
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Jallikattu lover
December 8, 2020
From a prolific commentor in this blog to being a subject of a David Fincher film, congratulations MANK!
Fincher cannot even be compared to Nolan. Nolan writes and directs his own films and is still as prolific as MANK.
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Thupparivaalan
December 8, 2020
Jallikattu lover: I feel Fincher is miles ahead of Nolan as a pure director. Everything from staging, choreography of movement, performances of actors, etc in Fincher’s films are miles ahead of Nolan’s. I don’t think Nolan is capable of something as emotionally complex as Mank
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Madan
December 8, 2020
Yet to see this one. But as for Nolan vs Fincher, Nolan makes films about spaceships and fighter jets and Fincher makes films about the human race as such by exploring specific situations. One is not better than the other by itself but I prefer the latter.
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Satya
December 10, 2020
Madan: Agreed. Post Inception, I could not appreciate any film of Christopher Nolan except Dunkirk. They are almost always the same – a depressed world full of sci-fi excesses. I am not qualified enough to comment on Fincher as I have not watched all of his work. But I can’t think of an Indian variant of Zodiac, where the pace comes to a still when the investigation goes cold. For the current audience, it would be very ballsy.
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Madan
December 10, 2020
Satya : I liked Prestige most of Nolan’s films and I guess BR said the same thing too. Wonder how the director of that wonderful film became obsessed with convoluted sci fi and ‘gigantism’ as one review put it.
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