"Mank"

 By Matt Duncan

Coastal View News

“Mank” received the most Oscar nominations of any movie this year, proving once again that Hollywood likes itself.

 

This movie is about movies—and movie makers. “Mank” refers to Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), writer of “Citizen Kane”.

 

Herman is your typical Hollywood tragic hero. That is to say, he’s a hot mess. He’s an alcoholic, a grump, and a tyrant. He also just broke his leg in a car accident. So he’s stuck in bed.

 

That’s where this movie picks up—Herman in bed with nothing to do but rant, rave, and crave booze.

 

Then none other than Orson Welles gives him something to do. He wants Herman to write a movie for him. So, with nothing better to do, Herman gets on it, dictating the script to his secretary, Rita Alexander (Lily Collins).

 

Rita notices that the main character in Herman’s story is an awful lot like media magnate William Randolph Hearst. Then come the flashbacks—from when Herman knew Hearst. The rest of “Mank” oscillates between 1940—when Herman is working on “Citizen Kane”—and the 1930s, when Herman was just getting started.

 

1930 is when Herman was first introduced to Hearst (Charles Dance) by actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried). Herman and Hearst hit it off, and, as a result, a lot of the 1930s for Herman seems to be spent getting boozy at his buddy’s castle.

 

But there is a more serious side to their upper-crust social life: politics. They like to sit around talking about the Nazis, socialism, and the California governor’s race. A lot of them want hotshot socialist Upton Sinclair to be governor, but Hearst doesn’t. Hearst funds a smear campaign against Sinclair and, in the process, unhappily implicates the others who are forced by their Hearst-funded employers at MGM to produce the smear films.

 

Back in 1940 Herman’s work on “Citizen Kane” is up and down. Standard stuff: Producers worry that Herman isn’t making enough progress. Others worry about the content, or the style, or the politics, or whatever. Eventually, he finishes it. Some like it (a lot), some don’t (a lot).

 

Then more squabbling occurs over whether to go ahead and make the film (no spoiler needed there), whether to credit Herman as a writer, and so on.

 

Yes, Hollywood likes itself. And it likes to revel. It likes to tell its golden tales of yore as though they’re modern Iliads—and as though everyone, Hollywood-insider or not, would and should give a care.

 

No doubt some will give a care, if for no other reason than that this insider-baseball story is told with such style. Gary Oldman is mesmerizing. Director David Fincher (who is using his late father Jack’s screenplay) knows how to make a movie. The black-and-white cinematography is at times warmly nostalgic and at other times eerie and unsettling.

 

I like movies plenty (obviously). But, if you couldn’t already tell, I found myself not caring all that much about this story. I’m a curious enough guy, and I like little historical vignettes of all sorts, so I’m not totally sure why I wanted so badly to yawn at my TV, to really let it know that I’m over it, I don’t care.

 

Maybe it’s to offset Hollywood’s out-of-whack interest in itself. Herman Mankiewicz, Orson Welles, Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst, “Citizen Kane”! These are interesting things! But, I don’t know, maybe they’re not that interesting—not portrayed like this, not as a saga of the SoCal pantheon. At any rate, it is a bit gross to witness the self-referential self-love ooze from the screen (and splatter all over the Oscar envelopes).

 

“Mank” drums up some complexity by showing the role Hollywood played in pre-WWII politics. Perhaps this provides some nice allegories and lessons about the relationship between the set and the statehouse. Or perhaps, again, Hollywood has an outsized sense of its importance: thinking of itself as some vital source of change despite being impotent to do anything but make movies about its impotence—its heroic, tragic, well-meaning impotence.

 

Now, the money in Hollywood—whether it’s from Hearst, Welles, Oprah, or whoever it is that funded “Mank”—maybe that makes a big behind-the-scenes difference. Maybe that’ll get you House seats, statehouses, and Oscar nods. But two things about money in politics: First: No duh! And, second: Yuck.

 

Enjoy it if you can.