Mank is a film whose time has come

 Mank is ostensibly the story behind the writing of Citizen Kane (1941), regarded in some quarters as the greatest film ever made. If it does not quite deliver what it promises, it succeeds surprisingly on a whole new layer of meaning.

David Fincher’s film, based on a script by his late father Jack, was supposed to have been made at the end of last century, after the success of Fincher’s The Game (1997). The plan was apparently scuppered because Fincher wanted to shoot in black and white, but no one wanted to take on the financial risk.

Mank now duly appears, in black and white courtesy of Netflix, and it has been worth the wait. Although the events on screen are almost a century old, they have a contemporary resonance and a feeling of being, as we used to say about Warner’s crime melodramas, ‘ripped from today’s headlines’.

The film is notionally about who wrote Citizen Kane. Was it maverick screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz or wunderkind director Orson Welles? This is irrelevant. If you are interested, you know already if you are not you probably don’t care. What this film is really about is media manipulation, the influence of mass media, fake news, and emotional truth. Much more interesting and relevant than a disputed screen credit.

Mankiewicz has been commissioned by Welles to write his script by RKO studios which has ceded full control to the young director, a remarkable concession for his debut film. But the fictionalised story of media baron William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) is making waves and Mank is racing against time to finish it before the studio caves on the promise to Welles.

A man and his typewriter is not much of a ticking clock scenario. We need more so the film cuts back and forth to 30s Hollywood to discover the source of Mank’s enmity against Hearst.

The story centres on the 1934 race for Governor of California in which the socialist writer Upton Sinclair and his End Poverty in California (EPIC) campaign is running against the Republican candidate. The establishment, here represented by Hearst and MGM boss Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard), is threatened, especially the movie studios. They set out to successfully crush Sinclair with fake news broadcast by Hearst’s radio stations and fake newsreels made by MGM and shown in their cinemas.

For all his gadfly behaviour and drunken antics, Mankiewicz is indulged in his dissolution by both Hearst and Mayer who have kept him on the payroll. Mank is a passive participant so the suggestion is that Citizen Kane will be his revenge on Hearst and Mayer for treating him as their court jester.

The problem facing Fincher with Mank is the same as the problem facing Welles with Kane. How do you get the audience to want to spend two hours in the company of an unpleasant egotist? Welles handles it brilliantly with multiple perspectives to pin down a mercurial man. Fincher has flashbacks and a much less complex character.

Mank very consciously imitates the look and sound of Citizen Kane, right down to the phantom cue dots to indicate the change of a non-existent reel. However, Citizen Kane was fresh and exciting, we had never seen its like before. Mank is a pastiche, especially in terms of the sound and the music which, while intended to evoke the original, only remind you how much better it is.

As you would expect in its wander through Depression-era Hollywood the film has more Easter eggs than a poultry farm. There is a certain geek level one upmanship to be gained by identifying the faces in the crowd.

In the foreground Gary Oldman is great in the title role and a nuanced turn from Amanda Seyfried helps to rehabilitate Hearst’s paramour Marion Davies. Some of the support is excellent too especially Ferdinand Kingsley as the perceptive Irving Thalberg, Sam Troughton as Welles’s ally John Houseman, and Tuppence Middleton as ‘Poor Sarah’ Mankiewicz, a woman for whom the phrase ‘long suffering’ might have been coined.

Tom Burke has the distinctive Wellesian timbre down to the note, but otherwise he isn’t required to do much. Unlike Citizen Kane, Mankiewicz is the star of this one and he enjoys his moment in the spotlight.