But unlike every critic, I didn’t love it.
I did love a lot of things about it — shot all in black and white, the era, the making of CITIZEN KANE, the process of screenwriting, and there’s a real treat if you’re fans of KHJ radio….
But…
It was too long, if you’re not a real student of Hollywood in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and if you’re under 50 years-old, you will not have any idea who most of these people are and what they’re talking about. A lot of ideology flies around that deals with things that were topics of the time but don’t directly affect the movie.
The main story centers around Herman Mankiewicz writing CITIZEN KANE -- Orson Welles' brilliant hatchet job of newspaper emperor, William Randolph Hearst. The problem is that Mank was friends with Hearst and especially his mistress Marion Davies. So there's a real conflict of interests. And the making of the movie is sure to be fraught with controversy. Does he walk away from the project? That’s the big dilemma. It didn’t need 2 hours and 10 minutes to resolve that.
And now I’m going to really spit on the cross. I don’t think Gary Oldman is right for the part. Blasphemy you say (even if you haven’t seen the movie)! Oldman is a great actor, morphs into any part he takes. He was brilliant as Churchill, awesome as Commissioner Gordon. I admire his work greatly. But the key character trait of Mank was that he was wickedly funny. His one-liners, his droll zingers, and pithy remarks supposedly put even the premier wits of the day to shame. And I’m sorry, but Gary Oldman is not funny. He delivers the lines (which on paper could have been funnier on the whole) with his usual precision, but I just didn’t buy that this guy had the twinkle, the razor-sharp comic mind that made him Hollywood's darling for five minutes, and the hit of any party.
All the other aspects of Mank’s character — his brashness, intelligence, battle with alcohol, self-destructive tendencies all came through with clarity and finesse. But research, make-up, accents, and prosthetics can’t make you funny (unless the prosthetics is a chicken suit).
Now, this may just be me. In fairness, critics have called MANK (directed by David Fincher) a beautiful textured film, a masterwork study of Old Hollywood, a glowing metaphor for I-don’t-know-what. Oscars all around! And I’m glad movies like this are still being made. Major studios have long abandoned character studies for superheroes and animated sequels. But if you see MANK, and I still recommend that you do, and you don’t absolutely love it, just know you’re not the only one.
I am glad you didn't love the film. I always wonder when I have that reaction to a critics' darling. For example, I've never seen 2001 A Space Odyssey, at least all the way through.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, it wasn't exactly on rotation on TV, and I can't remember ever actuall seeing it on the Blockbuster shelf. So when Turner Classic Movies played it at 6 p.m. on a Friday night I was thrilled. I could watch the film after a long week and finally see what it was all about. I think I fell asleep about 25 minutes into its run and when I woke up I didn't know what the hell was going on. So I turned off the film.
If you can't keep me awake, I'm sorry but the film isn't good in my opinion. I don't care how many raves it gets from Pauline Kael.
As to "Mank" I've been reading stories in The New York Times and The Washington Post about how Welles actually did write a lot of Citizen Kane himself. If you want to tell a story about Hollywood, do what Welles did - fictionalize the story. Then you can write whatever you want. But if it's about real people and real events, you have an obligation to be factual, even if the facts get in the way of the story. None of "this is the West sir. When truth contradicts the legend, print the legend" stuff.
People will watch this and believe it. That does a disservice to the actual people and their actual accomplishments. I know Welles has been dead for 35 years, but he had enough failures in his lifetime. We don't need to detract from his greatest success.
Good movie. Not great. Good.
ReplyDeleteYour point about Oldman being funny is brought home in one line.
When he says Marion Davies waiting to be burned at the stake and he greets her with "What's at stake here?"
Oldman glosses thru the line. No delivery whatsoever.
The long speech in Heart's dining room where he vomits and says white wine, goes with the fish, was probably a lot funnier when Mank said it.
Also probably made Mank out to be a little more of a Lefty than he really was.
One criticism I have seen of it is that while in real life Mankiewicz and his wife were the same age, Oldman is 29 years older than Tuppence Middleton who plays his wife.
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ReplyDeleteKen, you're absolutely right. Oldman was miscast. While watching I thought can't he at least give Mank just a light schmear of Yiddishe kop?
The film has some attributes, but it's not too much more than 30 or 40 Old Hollywood anecdotes strung together into something like a screenplay.
ReplyDeleteDavid Fincher expects the audience to feel all atingle whenever a John Houseman or an Irving Thalberg or a Ben Hecht appears. The problem is that any audience that does so has already heard all those anecdotes.
Gary Oldman is hilarious
ReplyDeleteIt didn’t get good until Mayer showed up.
ReplyDeleteI just didn't think he pulled the two emotional elements together. I felt like there was the element of progressivism / socialism manifest in the Sinclair election campaign. And then there was the personal conflict regarding his connections to Hearst and Davies. It turns out the entire political subplot is artificial; these were not Mank's politics. There was no would be director who killed himself over the anti-Sinclair newsreels. But even if there had been it wasn't clear to me that manx commitment to politics was so great that he would have betrayed friends over it, which seems to be the reason for the political component.
ReplyDeleteI'm a big Gary Oldman fan but he was not funny, he was way too old (someone else commented on his wife, but he and Marion Davies were the same age too), and he wasn't nearly Jewish enough. I don't know that I completely agree with Neal Gabler's An Empire of Their Own but Jewish ethnicity seems to have played a larger role in Hollywood culture than this movie is willing to portray.
I, too, would tell people to see it, but I would make them understand that it's based on a true story.
Two comments, not having seen the movie:
ReplyDelete1) It's widely reported that the screenplay was by the director's late father. Maybe that has to do with why it wasn't edited down?
2) Oldman acts in a way that's intended to be comical in the movie Nobody's Baby (for which he also has a producer credit). What a sad viewing experience that was.
My wife and I lasted 30 minutes into this film. It was very choppy, and we couldn't connect with any of the characters. Didn't really care what was going on.
ReplyDeleteThis may be one of those movies where people involved in the industry like it more than those who aren't. The reviews on IMDB are telling - a LOT of low to mediocre reviews but also quite a few who cry "genius."
I think Oldman is one of the best actors ever. But I agree, I've never seen him do legit comedy. If he could ever pull it off, it just might cement him as the GOAT. (I currently think Robin Williams has that title.)
ReplyDeleteI bailed about halfway through; the look, B&W, old Hollywood, the subject matter, were all great. The execution was not. I thought the script was bad; endless flashbacks, Long, off-topic namedropping scenes. Did Mank know anyone who wasn't an A-lister? The writer's room at Paramount with George Kaufman and S.J. Pearlman and a stripper-typist was beyond absurd. Can anyone imagine Kaufman going into to a studio exec's office and pitching like he's trying to land an episode of "Punky Brewster?" And as an actual drunk, I can tell you from experience, Oldman's stumble-drunk act was a cartoonish portrayal of alcoholism. In fairness, Foster Brooks was not available. "Poor Sara" did stand by her man, but it wasn't charming and was pretty horrible for the kids. I saw none of that in the film. If it came along after I bailed, ignore this last part. Of course, you are free to ignore the first part, too.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen it and don't plan to do so, but a lot of it, I think, is based on how self-adoring so much of the industry is, so people are going to love a film about the industry itself. Think of how many Broadway shows actually are about Broadway!
ReplyDeleteSaw "Mank" last week. I agree with the comments. Worth seeing. Not great. Oldman's good in it. Could stand some editing.
ReplyDeleteKen, if you have Apple streaming, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Ted Lasso. I just got access, thanks to my son buying a new phone, and I was totally blown away by it.
Many of topics discussed in this forum came to mind watching it, but again, I was totally blown away by it. Best show I've seen in at least the last decade. Kudos to Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence.
Ken -- Thanks for your astute critique. I'm a bit more critical. For me, the problem is that -- in the film -- Mank is a feckless, self-destructive alcoholic when we first see him....and at the end, he's a feckless, self-destructive alcoholic. Plus the filmmakers fall into a trap of their own making. They were so afraid no one knew anything about the 1930s and 40s that everyone labels each other and lays out clunky exposition. How many times do we need to hear (from how many characters) that Mank is his "own worst enemy"? Mank was not destroyed by the studio system. Many, many writers thrived in that system. Mank's story is pathetic, not tragic. (And you're right about Oldman -- imagine Nathan Lane in that role, the bite he could have given those lines.)
ReplyDeleteI think you could open a review of any 21st century movie with the comment, "It's too long." They are almost always the products of artistes given too long a leash by timid executives afraid to say "Cut." And that would include THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT.
ReplyDeleteAs for Oldman as comedian, I wasn't bothered by his delivery. He was playing an alcoholic drama writer, not a performer. I wasn't expecting Carey Grant or Robert Benchley. Maybe he needed a different director.
A trivia note: TCM's Ben Mankiewicz, Mank's real-life grandson, has a voice-over part as a broadcaster at the Academy Awards. I didn't notice at the time; I saw his name in the credit roll and had to look it up to see what he played.
-30-
I saw this in a theater a few weeks ago (I've already had COVID, so I support theaters.) I have a different perspective than most people: I am a showbiz historian so I am keenly interested in any film set in that era, and I love "Citizen Kane," not as an academic exercise but as a movie. If I'm channel-surfing and land on it, I'll stay with it to the end. I don't get people who claim it's boring; I think it's brilliant, start-to-finish.
ReplyDeleteEven so, I wasn't enamored of this movie. I agree with a lot of the criticisms already named: miscasting of Mank, the character seeming pathetic and depressing, the shoehorned-in political stuff that wasn't accurate, Kaufman in that pitch session (unthinkable!), etc. Also, the script was first written years ago and inspired by the Pauline Kael theory that Welles had nothing to do with the writing, which has been widely debunked. The director said he did some rewrites to make it less anti-Welles, but it still doesn't give him his due. I think you would have to be someone like me to be interested in this film, and I did find it interesting, but even I didn't like it all that much.
To me, the best moment was Mayer saying that the magic of the movies is that the customer only buys a memory of the product while the producer gets to keep it. That has chilling resonance in an age when so many people want to edit, censor and digitally alter old films to make them conform to whatever the current PC standards are. That's why I have a house full of DVDs, CDs and records: if you have to stream it, you don't really own it and can't preserve it.
Of course it's too long -- it's Netflix, where there's no studio to say, "We can cut twenty-five minutes without losing anything." (See THE IRISHMAN.) Also it's two movies, the writing of KANE and the 1934 Sinclair campaign, with only a tenuous connection between them. I just had a look at Mank's writing credits and while he worked on some entertaining movies and a few clunkers, there's no reason to think he single-handedly made movie history in 1940 and then went back to biopics about baseball players. Clearly Welles had a major hand in writing KANE -- he usually re-wrote the movies he just directed like TOUCH OF EVIL.
ReplyDeleteThe flashback format was clearly an imitation of KANE but it doesn't flow, hence the captions telling us the year. As for the reel-change indications, that's just a joke for old-movie insiders. Also, I've heard he actually threw up in a bathroom and then returned with that killer joke about the fish and the white wine.
Two stars.
Thank you! There was a lot I liked about Mank (that cinematography is STUNNING), but the whole thing just left me cold. I would have liked less politics and more of the actual creative process that went into making Citizen Kane.
ReplyDeleteThis would be a great second movie to see after seeing Citizen Kane when taking a college level course in screenwriting with an emphasis on Citizen Kane.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit I thought Orson Welles wrote Citizen Kane and I took plenty of film courses back in college. Now I know what I don't know.
I think Nathan Lane would have been better as Mank.
I really like the Nathan Lane idea.
DeleteI was underwhelmed by the film. Gary Oldman didn't seem "right" to play Mankiewicz, and looked a LOT older than the forty-something that Mankiewicz was when Citizen Kane was being made. I think a more interesting film could be made regarding the work that Mankiewicz did with the Marx Brothers, who are overdue for a film biography.
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ReplyDelete- I haven't seen this movie - and I won't be able to until/unless it comes out on DVD in the foreseeable future.
When it does, I will see it, because Hollywood Biopix are a favorite genre of mine, for all the reasons mentioned above, and lots more besides.
My all-time FaveRave is Quiz Show, which plays such merry hob with American history in the Fabulous Fifties - but that's another story ...
- The comments show a consistent effort to try and transfer the political attitudes of the present to eras of history that are long past, in many cases several times over.
Over the course of my own lifetime (born 30 September 1950), I've gotten to see the sands shift, the tides turn, the mountains crumble, (insert the cliche of your choice) - one of the major reasons that I cannot embrace any of the extremes in American politics, left or right.
* A quote from my friend Max Allan Collins:
"I wish that the Left Wing and the Right Wing would both flap their wings and fly the hell away."*
- Mank, on its face, seems to be 'Pauline Kael Redux', aka 'Orson Who?'
Query: have Peter Bogdanovich or Henry Jaglom, Orson Welles's chief apologists in recent times, weighed in on this picture yet?
Just askin', is all ...
I too love Citizen Kane. But is it not predicated on a fatal flaw? That is, no one was in the room when he said "Rosebud."
ReplyDeleteAny chance Fincher could have found an American actor? Or is Oldman now the first choice go-to for bio-pics? When you drop a foreign actor into such a role it becomes all about the actor rather than the film.
ReplyDeleteJim S.: Pauline Kael's "rave" about 2001 was to call it "a monumentally unimaginative movie".
ReplyDeletePortrayed briefly in Mank, Ben Hecht— ten times as accomplished a journalist, playwright, scenarist, publisher, film/TV producer-director, media star, political activist — is a figure entirely more worthy of a biopic, but who would wish such Oscar-bait claptrap upon him?
ReplyDeleteBio-plays are one thing, but straight biopics are generally hokey, unrevivable actor showcases, forgotten a week after Oscar night by all but the nominated and their agents. Comic biopics (Melvin & Howard, Ed Wood..) — or those dealing with outrageous/violent protagonists — are among the few that don’t clear a multiplex faster than Joan Baez did in Woodstock.
Maybe after this we can get a movie about Marion Davies, TV sitcom pilot writer (oh yes she did...)
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!00% boring. and I am old enough to know most of the people in the film. An uninteresting movie about an uninteresting man.
ReplyDeleteI think it explains why "Citizen Kane" became "Hollywood's Greatest Movie": ego and politics against the world. Mank showed the battlefield and the generals, all in their jealous, foolish splendor! The Jews had Hollywood, Hitler had Leni Riefenstahl. Many Americans had swooned under Hitler's charm; many are swooning under Dump's. It's an epic ethnic battle, waged by witless clowns. Mank's humor was eloquently portrayed, mocking the deaf idiocies of his audience, his resource. Great films are rare, not usual. Mank knocks Kane from its perch.
ReplyDeleteMuch has (rightly, IMO) been made of the ridiculous age difference in casting Mank and his, in reality same age, wife. But I also thought it was ridiculous that Orson Wells, who they kept pointing out was only 24, was played by a 40-year old actor. I mean, c'mon.
ReplyDeleteThis movie clearly was an attempt to recreate Citizen Kane. Not in a literal sense, but in the cinematography, circular storyline, like a cinnamon roll stated in the movie, and some of the edits.I had watched CK for the third time a week before I saw Mank, so that was a plus as far as my perspective goes. I enjoyed it, but it was not a great movie. Plus, What part of Victorville is that pretty?
ReplyDeleteKen -- I purposely waited a day to do this, and I apologize profusely if I'm crossing a line here. (And feel free not to publish this). I know you love old Hollywood. So do I, and I created a podcast that pretends to be the ULTIMATE tell-all autobiography of a screen goddess from the 40s, 50s and 60s. Romances with Castro, JFK, Howard Hughes and Truffaut, the blacklist -- it's got EVERYTHING. I'm not looking for a plug, I just thought (as someone who loves radio) you'd enjoy it. It's called "The Atomic Bombshell!" (https://richlyspun.com/show/atomicbombshell/)
ReplyDeleteFor me, personally, watching the Smurfs is a better use of my time.
ReplyDeleteFor everyone though, I cannot see how anyone can miss that Citizen Kane is anything less than a masterpiece, no matter who wrote what, when it was made, who was naughty and who was nice.
The story isn't really about Hearst so much than it is about who he was, what he was and what Hearst was capable of doing to himself, those around him and the world he controlled.
The story is epic and eternal. It's basic human instincts, excesses, power, principles, media, manipulation, position, relationships.
WARRICK: Really, Charles! People will think ---
WELLES: What I TELL them to think!
It seems that this will never be dated. Every film steals from this one. Listen to the commentaries. It has more special effects than Star Wars, yet they service the film rather than define it. Citizen Kane is the invention of sound movies. Listen to Welles Mercury Theater radio shows and you will see that no one else could have put it together with the talent assembled from that group of people. Radio also made Citizen Kane possible, not just film.
I've already seen that other HBO movie about Citizen Kane with the voice of Pinky and the Brain doing a Welles impression (and he's excellent, by the way). It was okay.
Gotta go. Yogi's Treasure Hunt awaits.
Nobody knew it at the time but Citizen Kane turned out to be as much about Orson Welles as it was about William Randolph Hearst
ReplyDeleteMaurice LaMarche (of "Brain" fame) voiced Welles in "Ed Wood," which I believe had nothing to do with HBO. But another "Kane"-related film nobody has yet mentioned is "RKO 281," made about 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, for those curious about this Mankiewicz, Entertainment Weekly recently did a piece on the movies he penned, one of which ("Man Of The World") starred a young Carole Lombard and her soon-to-be first husband william Powell, half a decade before they made "My Man Godfrey" (plus, it isn't a comedy). https://ew.com/movies/7-mank-films-you-should-watch/
I avoid biopics. The past is oversimplified to cartoonish levels, and they try to make the plot "relevant" in the hope the audience reaction will be "Oh my God! It's exactly the way things are today!" I'd rather read a book.
ReplyDeleteDon’t leave us hanging, Ken - surely you have a casting suggestion....
ReplyDelete"another "Kane"-related film nobody has yet mentioned is "RKO 281," made about 20 years ago."
ReplyDeleteI must be the "nobody." That's exactly the one I was talking about when I said "HBO." Forgot the name. Saw both of them and clearly they all blend together. Makes my point.
Completely agree that Oldman was both wrong and too old; he seemed out of sync when trying to unwrap the wry, yet bitter American scribbler. Giamatti or John C. Reilly may have seemed too obvious and not 'big-name enough'but they'd have been good options IMO... Understandably the director clung to his father's script to a flaw, and with the Mankiewicz family eager to continue to promote the idea that a 'flake like Welles (my terminology for their perceived wish to promote Herman as sole author)' had little to any hand in the writing of Kane is both admirable and tiresome, considering the solid research by a number of scholars over the past three decades which has put Kael's piece through the shredder. Really, is it that hard to see Welles' fingerprints as a collaborator on the final print?
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