BEFORE: This is another film that was in contention for the Best Picture Oscar not this year, but last year. The ceremony that was 15 months ago, not 3 months ago - the one held in 2021 featuring the nominated films of 2020. Am I making this more complicated than it needs to be? It's always confusing because the films released in one year get awarded in the next, so out of the films that were released in 2020, one gets to be called the Best Picture of 2021, or some people refer to it that way, which I suppose is technically incorrect. It's why some outlets fall back on "Best Picture at the 93rd Annual Academy Awards", so it doesn't get more confusing, but of course that only makes it MORE confusing, because nobody out there knows what year they gave out the 93rd Annual Awards, they have to then look that up.
Anyway, I started this year with "Nomadland", which was awarded the Best Picture of 2020, but won the award in 2021. Last year I only managed to watch ONE of the Best Picture nominees from 2020, which was "The Trial of the Chicago 7", but since January 1 I've been catching up, by also watching "Promising Young Woman", "Judas and the Black Messiah", and now "Mank". "The Father" is on tap for June, obvi, so once I watch that one, I've have seen 6 out of 8, leaving just two - "Minari" and "Sound of Metal". "Minari" is on cable now, but God knows when I'll be able to link to it - "Sound of Metal" is also on my list, but I think it's on AmazonPrime, I hope to work both of them in soon.
I've still only seen two of the ten films nominated for Best Picture of 2021, just "Dune" and "The Power of the Dog". I guess check back in with me in 12 months?
And if I'd kept the original plan for this year's chain, and not flipped around that section in mid-May, I'd still have ended up right HERE, because then "The King's Man" would have ended up on yesterday, and Charles Dance would carry over to this one. But now, instead, Lily Collins carries over from "Windfall".
THE PLOT: 1930's Hollywood is re-evaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of "Citizen Kane".
AFTER: I've seen other films about the making of "Citizen Kane", or the process of Orson Welles leading up to it - most notably there was "RKO 281" and "Me and Orson Welles", though the latter was more about a play produced at the Mercury Theater, but "RKO 281" was totally about making "Kane", if I remember right. Christian McKay played Orson in "Me and Orson Welles" and Liev Schreiber portrayed him in "RKO 281", oh, and then there was Angus Macfadyen in "Cradle Will Rock", but I'll always fondly recall Vincent D'Onofrio playing him in "Ed Wood". Great casting, all around.
The subject matter of this film is fairly controversial, because "Citizen Kane" is one of those cinematic sacred cows, you can't say anything bad about it, or you'll be in trouble. It didn't win Best Picture that year, but it won Best Original Screenplay, and Oscars were given to Welles and Herman Mankiewicz for their thinly-veiled takedown of William Randolph Hearst. But then in 1971, critic Pauline Kael suggested that Welles' Oscar was undeserved, because he didn't do any work on the script, it was all Mankiewicz. Even if it's true, this is a waste-of-time argument, because it just doesn't matter, all that matters is whose names are on the first page of the script, and who's holding a shiny gold Oscar at the end of the ceremony.
But Kael's assertion got some traction, and writer Jack Fincher made a screenplay focusing on Mankiewicz, his background, his unusual process, and his work on "Kane", then he died in 2003, but his son, David Fincher, eventually turned this into a movie. Welles is dead, Mankiewicz is dead, Pauline Kael is dead (?) and same goes for Jack Fincher, and by now I don't think there's anyone still alive who worked on "Citizen Kane" in any capacity, so essentially, this is all hearsay. The big question then becomes, does this even matter? I guess only to anyone who thinks "Citizen Kane" is a work of pure genius, the best film ever made, but I don't know how many of those people are still around, also. I mean, come on, "Citizen Kane" or "Avengers: Endgame", which would you rather watch again? I know, it shouldn't be an either/or situation, there should be room enough in your viewing schedule for BOTH. Welles got really crazy near the end, as seen in "F For Fake" and "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead", but he never made a superhero movie, what would THAT have been like?
So this film "Mank" exists to prove this point, that the story was all Mankiewicz, and not Welles. Mankiewicz knew simply everybody in Hollywood, but Welles was a theater and radio guy from New York, an outsider. That's one point for Kael's argument. Mankiewicz knew Marion Davies, Hearst's girlfriend who was the star of the films he financed, despite having zero acting ability and a strong Brooklyn accent, so she just wasn't cut out for the "talkies" when they came along (a plot point also seen in "Singin' in the Rain", aka the musical version of "Citizen Kane", only not really).
"Mank" is set up with one of those split-timeline structures, the framing timeline is set in 1940, during the writing of the screenplay, and from there, the film flashes back to 1930, 1933-1934, and 1937, all detailing Mankiewicz's experiences in La-La Land, sort of Forrest Gump style where he interacts with Louis B. Mayer, William Randolph Hearst, Irving Thalberg, David O. Selznick and to a lesser extent, Charlie Chaplin, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Dolores Del Rio. The film very kindly telegraphs the flashbacks with titles that are like script notes, saying things like "Exterior - Hearst compound at San Simeon, 1934 (flashback)". It's a little too cutesy, but honestly I wish more films would take an approach like this once they start time-jumping, it was very helpful. Without this, it could be very confusing, and some people might be wondering why Herman Mankiewicz is in a body cast in one scene and then attending a party in the next scene without the cast.
So, there are two stories going on at once, one set in the 1930's and one set in 1940 - in the earlier timeline we see Mank re-meeting Davies on the set of some horrible movie, but also befriending Hearst. A year or two later, Mank attends Louis Mayer's birthday party at Hearst's estate, and everyone discusses this Hitler fellow, how dangerous the Nazis could be, and the fact that Upton Sinclair wants to run for governor of California. In 1934, Mank and his brother Joe are working for MGM, where Hearst is funding propaganda films to discredit Sinclair, produced by Thalberg. The smear campaign is successful, as we see on election night 1934, where Republican Frank Merriam easily defeats Democrat Upton Sinclair, and Mank loses a bundle by betting on the wrong candidate. Shortly thereafter, Mank's colleague Shelly Metcalf commits suicide, perhaps because of his work on the propaganda films, perhaps because of a recent medical diagnosis. Either way, this appears to be the pivotal point where Mank turned against Hearst.
Fast forward three years to 1937, where a drunk Mankiewicz crashes another party at Hearst Castle, and by this point, he's really got it in for Hearst and Mayer. He basically gives the "elevator pitch" for "Citizen Kane" in an intoxicated rant, no names but it's super obvious who he's talking about. Alcohol seems to be the trigger that connects the past and the present for the audience here, it's possible that Mank gets drunk every night while working on the "Kane" screenplay, and that prompts the next flashback. Then Mank gets drunk in the past, and we return to the "present" storyline in 1940 - I'd have to watch it again to be sure, but I think this is a bit like "Quantum Leap" or "Back to the Future", with alcohol in the place of a time machine.
This was a different time, for sure - drinking was a bit more acceptable, the phrase "responsible drinking" didn't even exist, and I'm honestly not sure if drunk driving was against the law back then. I mean, you could still smoke in restaurants and movie theaters and on airplanes, so who cared about a little vehicular manslaughter here and there?
Speaking of car crashes, the 1940 timeline sort of starts with one, forcing Mank to be taken to a recovery facility in the California desert, where John Houseman sets him up with a secretary to take dictation for the script, a massage therapist, and a secret stash of alcohol, aka time-travel juice. The booze helps Mank remember the important details from his Hollywood career in the 1930's, but it also slows down the process - it turns out you can't write a screenplay as quickly once you factor in 12-hour blackouts. So Mank's up against the deadline, Houseman comes to hurry things along, but also reminds Mank that his deal is to receive NO screen credit. However, when Welles offers him a buyout, Mank reneges on the deal, and demands screen credit for what he calls his greatest work. Well, we all know how THAT one ended, both men got Oscars for the screenplay.
Ironies abound here - "Citizen Kane" was one of the first non-linear films, and "Mank" kind of follows suit. The film is in black and white, as "Kane" was, and uses similar filming techniques that were popular at the time, such as a driving scene with a car against a very obvious fake background. "Mank" also uses the "day-for-night" lighting technique on the grounds of Hearst Castle in San Simeon, you hardly ever see that used any more, these days they'd just press a button and change the color of the pixels in the sky, probably. And then there's that shot of Mank passing out and dropping the glass liquor bottle, very similar to Kane dropping the snowglobe in that more famous movie. This is maybe a little too clever and insider-y, though.
I just don't know if it's worth all this trouble to make one little point about "Citizen Kane". OK, so Mankiewicz knew Marion Davies, and he had it in for Hearst. Well, they say "write what you know", so that's what he did. Even if Orson Welles didn't co-write the screenplay with him, he was still the boss, he had to decide whether to film the script as is or change it, and that means he was involved in the writing process to some degree, and now we're just arguing over what degree that was. It's a lot of fuss over nothing, if you ask me.
Also starring Gary Oldman (last seen in "HIitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Amanda Seyfried (last heard in "Scoob!"), Tom Pelphrey, Arliss Howard (last seen in "Birth"), Tuppence Middleton (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Monika Gossmann, Joseph Cross (last seen in "Untraceable"), Sam Troughton (last seen in "Sylvia"), Toby Leonard Moore (last seen in "John Wick"), Tom Burke (last seen in "The Invisible Woman"), Charles Dance (last seen in "The King's Man"), Ferdinand Kingsley (last seen in "Dracula Untold"), Jamie McShane, Jack Romano, Adam Shapiro (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), John Churchill, Jeff Harms, Derek Petropolis, Sean Persaud, Paul Fox (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Tom Simmons, Nick Job, Craig Welzbacher, Jessie Cohen, Desiree Louise, Amie Farrell (last seen in "American Sniper"), Ian Boyd, John Lee Ames, Bill Nye (last seen in "An Honest Liar"), Flo Lawrence, Leven Rambin (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Roslyn Cohn, Mark Fite (last seen in "Happy Endings"), Craig Robert Young (last seen in "A Good Year"), Sean Donnellan, Isabel Dresden, Glenn Edward, Grace Kennedy-Piehl, Emily Joy Lemus, Marcello Padilla, Trevor Powers, Christian Roberts (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Tyler Schweer, Helen Shephard, Joanne Thomson, Michelle Twarowska, Jelly Vamvas and the voice of Ben Mankiewicz (last seen in "White House Down").
RATING: 5 out of 10 references to Don Quixote
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