Mank, the film about Citizen Kane Reminding us to watch Citizen Kane

David Fincher returns to direct after a 6 year hiatus and the public fallout over creative differences while preparing to direct the Aaron Sorkin scripted Jobs, a project that would eventually be taken over by Danny Boyle. Fincher now turns to another biopic, this time written by his own father, Jack Fincher. Mank details the writing process of legendary Hollywood screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz as he wrote the first draft of the Citizen Kane manuscript, and, while the film is incredible on a technical level, features the always slick and ambient score of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and has a career defining performance by the great Gary Oldman, perhaps what is best about the film is that it reminds us to revisit the greatness of the classic it depicts and pays homage to. Funnily enough, Citizen Kane feels much more relevant, even after nearly 80 years since its making, than Mank ever does.

In a nearly post-Trump world, the character of Charles Foster Kane, though much more sympathetic than mogul and reality star Doland Trump, feels extremely pertinent to our own times. The comparisons between the two men are scarily similar. Kane is a rich and powerful man who builds castles to himself, who cheats on his wife with younger, more beautiful women, whose selfishness and disregard for morals harms those around him and the greater public who he has no real regard for, and whose populist political message is as loud and exciting as it is empty and dangerous. Unfortunately for us, the fictional Kane’s political success is dashed by a public that rejects his scandals, something that can’t be said for the unsettlingly less concerned American public of today.

While the Kane - Trump comparison may be thin and easy to make, it truly is incredible how well the drama of Citizen Kane as a whole stands up today. Populist leaders are making ground in countries all over the world and the media is now ruled by a new type of Yellow Journalism in the fake news that propagates social media and the right wing propaganda featured throughout Richard Murdoch’s empire in channels such as Fox News and newspapers such as the UKs The Sun and The Times, and the USAs The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. 

While Kane is said to have been based not only on William Randolf Hearst, but on several rich and powerful men of his time, one could believe that Mank and Welles travelled to the future to paint shades of Trump and Murdoch into their rich, larger than life character. Hearst did everything in his power to avoid the release of the film, from bribing studio heads to attempting to frame and corrupt the names of the filmmakers, to even trying to destroy the film for fear of it tarnishing his reputation. A different situation would possibly take place today were a film to be made about Trump’s private life. His reputation is already so tarnished that it is unlikely that any film would make any difference. His followers are so blind and convinced of his greatness that, no matter what horrors he commits, they are unlikely to abandon him. Instead of secretly trying to stop the film being made, Trump would take to twitter and publicly release his followers on the filmmakers. Perhaps he would even be more successful than Hearst was of silencing whatever studio would decide to give the green light to such a project.

And all the Trump, Murdoch comparisons aside, watching Citizen Kane again is a feast for the eyes. The film does not top so many ‘greatest films of all time’ lists for nothing. The low camera angles, the deep focus shots, the use of lighting and shadows, the non linear storytelling, the mystery of Rosebud, the convincing makeup, and the amazing shots of Xanadu, a palace that turns into a living nightmare, is all so superbly done that one can never tire of admiring it.

From the elliptical first scene as the camera moves closer and closer to Xanadu, establishing shot after establishing shot eventually cutting to Kane’s snow globe. The close up on his mustached lips, almost frosty themselves, utter the dying word ‘Rosebud,’ the breaking of the globe, the surreal view of the nurse entering the room as seen through the broken glass, and the final, almost king like covering of the dead body lead us to a brilliantly realistic newsreel film on the life of our dead protagonist. After the film concludes, we are introduced to our faceless travel companion who will lead us through the rest of the film, a journalist who is assigned the task of discovering the meaning of Kane’s last words. Just one sign of many of cinematographer Gregg Toland’s outstanding work, we never see more than the shadow of our guide. He is no more than a stand in for us, asking the questions we are asking ourselves to get to the bottom of the mystery. From this steller beginning, the film takes off, moving back and forth in time as the past is stitched together for us thanks to the masterful artistry of Welles, Toland, and yes, Mankiewicz, the hero of the new Fincher film.

An interesting choice for the director of such intense, bloody thrillers like Fight Club, Se7en, Gone Girl, and Zodiac, Mank sets out to make a hero out of Mankiewicz. The screenplay credit for the film ended up going to both Fincher’s disgraced subject along with Welles, but there was a tense rivalry between the two for who really deserved the most actual credit for the screenplay. Fincher’s film clearly gives that honor to Mank, an alcoholic, chubby, gambling addicted, down and out writer who is irresistibly charismatic and who never leaves the room without saying the cleverest line, a snide, sometimes insulting, but always incredibly intelligent comment that could easily have been uttered by any of the characters in All About Eve, the film written and directed by his more successful Hollywood director and screenwriter younger brother, Joseph Mankiewicz.

While Mank may seem like an insufferable, know it all loser, he is completely irresistible thanks to his smart comments, humour, and the simple fact that we are shown time and time again that he may be an asshole, but deep down he is an objectively good person. In the film he is credited with having saved an entire German town from the Nazis. He really did save Jews and sponsor them to come to America, though it never amounted to an entire town. In the films most important dramatic segment, he is also shown to be a supporter of socialist author Upton Sinclair’s bid for governor to the ire of his powerful Hollywood ‘friends’ like the producer Louis B. Mayer, and Hearst himself. He is shown to be the only reason minded progressive in a circle of horrible, hateful conservatives. This, also, seems to be heavily exaggerated, and it is just as likely that the real Mank voted against Sinclair as it is that he voted for him as it is that he got too drunk to remember to vote and never went to the polls.

While the screenplay goes out of its way to make us love Mank, with one character even saying, as if explaining to us directly to our face, ‘You are a good man, Mank,’ the film is able to rise above all this cheesy, schmaltzy, sentimentalism thanks to a wonderfully enjoyable performance by Gary Oldman, who wedges himself into the sloppy, disheveled haired, clever alcoholic skin of his character with great ease and skill.

And Fincher, the talented technical director he is, pays homage to Welles’ technical masterpiece throughout the film. The black and white photography is stunning, the moving camera utilized especially well as Mank moves through Hearst’s mansion’s zoological garden exterior and the endless, richly decorated hallways lined with treasures and suits of armour interior. We really get a glimpse of what Xanadu was inspired by. There is an exceptionally gorgeous scene when Mank meets Amanda Seyfried’s Marion Davis, Hearst’s young, bleach blonde wife, and the supposed influence for the character of Kane’s second wife, Emily Norton. They come together as if to have a picnic under some cotton trees, the cotton slowly flying, floating past them like the snow from Kane’s snow globe, as they discuss the possibility of forgiving each other.

Mank's critical look back at the Golden Age of Hollywood may be a nostalgic feast for the eyes, but the film’s content will be less than digestible for many viewers. Those who do not go in with some sort of background on the time period and the characters depicted are unlikely to enjoy the film at all. Someone who has never seen Citizen Kane nor heard of William Randolf Hearst is doomed to be utterly lost. The entire film is an insiders piece, reserved for those of us who love film and who have already gone through course after course deconstruction and analyzing Citizen Kane and its historical, technical, and aesthetic significance. 

So how did such an expensive looking, specific biopic about a screenwriter the majority of the public has never heard of get produced? Netflix of course. Fincher is the latest A-list auteur director to jump ship from the traditional studio productions to a streaming platform. The seemingly all consuming behemoth Netflix claims another artist rejected by Hollywood. Fincher’s reasons for abandoning the studios and agreeing to a contract with Netflix is because he wanted the authorship conditions so coveted and fought for over the history of American cinema, and granted to the makers of the subject of his new film. Orson Welles, the film’s director, famously was given total freedom in the making and editing of the film, something unheard of in Hollywood at this time, and something Welles would never be granted again.

Thanks to Netflix and other streaming platforms, Hollywood's most talented directors have been able to make something the traditional studios would not finance. They have been given this longed for final cut and total control that Welles enjoyed for his first film. And while Mank’s screenplay is great talky, jokey fun, Oldman is on top form, and Fincher and his longtime cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt beautifully depict 1940s Hollywood with the same glossy black and white look its own films had, Mank lacks the urgency that Citizen Kane had, and still bears even today. While Fincher takes elements of Citizen Kane to make Mank, the subject matter never lives up to the masterpiece it pays homage to. Mank is still a fun watch, and it was probably a great personal honor for Fincher to direct his own father’s screenplay, but of all the films he could have made with a blank check from Netflix, it does seem a tiny bit disappointing that he chose this one. That is not to say that Mank is not worth watching. It definitely is. But with the enormous shadow of Citizen Kane, not to mention that of Fincher’s own oeuvre hanging over it as well, it would be almost a miracle for Mank to outshine it. And though Mank may have to sit in the shadow of the masterpiece it depicts and is inspired by, it is a great excuse for a double billing.