19 December,2020 07:34 AM IST | Mumbai | Johnson Thomas
Mank. Pic/Youtube
Mank basically bio-tomes scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz' attempts to finish the screenplay of the now all-time favorite, greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane (1941). So, here we are looking in at 1930's Hollywood where a washed-up 40 year old gets a second act when 24 year old prodigy Orson Welles, the Director, assigns him that task. People who worked in that era of Hollywood garner mentions while the nitty-gritties and snippets that encapsulate Citizen Kane's history are spotlighted here.
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The plotting has a show and stop feel to it, the momentum is stuttering rather than fluent and the inconsistent tone fails to make it compulsively engaging. Jack Fincher's( David's recently deceased father) screenplay appears to be mining Pauline Kael's essay on the screenwriter for character depth so there's precious little of Welles and much more of Mankiewicz to chew on here. But the attempt to highlight something controversial feels rather discomfiting. It's rather preposterous to expect the audience to buy into the idea that Welle's contribution to the creation of the masterpiece, was limited. But for that underhand play, there's not much psychological depth in this telling.
While the story here appears opinion based, is fairly interesting, and the cast and director do well to give good accounts of their skill, the film still feels less than accomplished. As a matter of fact, much more was expected from David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac, Gone Girl, etc.) and his team of superior actors Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, Lily Collins. You don't get dark suspense- the leitmotif of Fincher's earlier films. Instead, the tone seems a little off. 'Mank' may not rank as amongst the best of Fincher's oeuvre but it certainly is competently done and the black-and-white cinematography adds weight to the idea that this could be reckoned as an homage to Welles' Citizen Kane!
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