Writer-director
David Fincher has been trying to bring his late father Jack Fincher’s script chronicling
screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and the writing of Citizen Kane for
nearly three decades. Originally meant
to follow-up The Game and proposed as a black-and-white photographed
venture back in time through the Golden Age of Hollywood, the project continued
to be postponed indefinitely until the folks at Netflix stepped in around late 2019. This would be the first film in nearly eight
years the perfectionist filmmaker would helm and to date it is clearly among
his most personal works.
With
Academy Award winning actor Gary Oldman at the forefront as the titular Mank,
this ensemble period piece was intended as both a love letter to a bygone era
of film production as well as dissecting the creative process with razor sharp
precision. This was to be Fincher’s Ed
Wood if you will which also played around with b&w photography and the
presence of Orson Welles. Considering
the pedigree of Fincher and painstaking perfectionism, the stakes for Mank were
indeed very high.
Unfortunately,
in spite of all the technically proficient filmmaking on display (shot in
2.20:1 no less), the magnetism of the subject matter and the strength of the
performances, something felt amiss within Fincher’s grand return to the silver
screen. For all of the bravura
moviemaking magic and capital A acting in the world, The Battle Over Citizen
Kane somehow proved to be more immediate and compelling than Fincher’s
porcelain finish. But that’s not to say
there wasn’t much to be enjoyed here.
Let’s
start with the film’s painterly and milky black-and-white palette which
recreates many of the visual techniques of Welles’ film while working in
Fincher’s own motifs and geometric fixations.
While director of photography Erik Messerschmidt and Fincher strive for
rustic imagery replete with cigarette burns at every reel change, the film
still bears the director’s hallmark slick monochromatic imagery despite being
set within the world of 1940s Hollywood make believe. Then there’s the monoaural sound mixing
coupled with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ first official orchestral score,
making it all sound like a celluloid print.
--Andrew Kotwicki