Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), Mank for his friends, was once one of the highest paid screenwriters over at MGM, but his alcoholism combined with his wit and cynicism have made him a bit of a pariah in Hollywood circles - in other words, just the man for Orson Welles (Tom Burke), 24 year old Hollywood maverick, who has just given carte blanche by RKO to make a movie about whatever he might consider fit, and he hands the writing duties solely over to Mank, who is at the moment tied to his bed due to an accident, so secretary Rita (Lily Collins) is hired to type out the script and keep him off the booze - the latter of which she doesn't succeed in. Having been given completely free reign by Welles, Mank digs deep into his own biography and especially his days at MGM in the mid-1930s, when he was already disgusted by the Hollywood systgem and especially how Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) ran the studio, but he has struck a deep (and strictly platonic) friendship with actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), a like-minded spirit - and also the wife of William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), mighty newspaper man who has never shied away from using his media-backed power to influence politics, even with dishonest practices - like faking newsreel footage to brand aspiring politician Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye) a socialist and drive his campaign for gouvernor of California into the ground - a ruse that one of Mank's close friends Shelly (Jamie McShane) was a part of, who consequently killed himself then. And this might be the actual turning point in Mank's career, who a couple of years later at a gala dinner in a state of drunkenness insulted both Mayer and Hearst so gravely that he was given the boot at MGM.

Of course, despite Mank being hidden away somewhere in the desert, news soon reaches Hollywood that he writes a screenplay - the eventually to be Citizen Kane - about Hearst, so friends, like screenwriter Charles Lederer (Joseph Cross) he's once been a mentor to, Mank's own brother Joe (Tom Pelphrey) and even Mario Davis pay him a visit to try to dissuade him from going through with it, but all with admitting this is the best he has ever written - but it's to no avail, Mank even demands from Welles to get screenwriting credit on the film, something he had formerly agreed to waiver. And for some unexplained reason, this led to a fall-out between the two, even if they share an Academy Award for the screenplay ...

It's Hollywood celebrates Hollywood, with the fallible but righteous antihero Mank being a perfect identification figure, and as such, the film is of course Oscar bait - and there's plenty good about this film, Gary Oldman's great (even as that was to be expected) and he leads a very solid cast, everything's shot in the most beautiful black and white and evokes the "old Hollywood" style (to a point where it sometimes apes certain shots and angles), and the lush set designs hit their marks pretty much invariably. On the downside, since all those the film's about are long deceased, the film takes great liberties with the truth, seems to listen more to hearsay than hard fact (for one, it's at best doubtful than Mankiewicz, seasoned pro that he was, wrote the script without any input from Welles), and changes details around quite a bit to fit the imposed story arc - which leads to the actual problem of the movie, while it's about writing the arguably greatest movie of cinema history, Citizen Kane, Mank isn't all that well-written, it relies too heavily on name-dropping, creates character arcs that lead to nowhere, just distract, or are overly-clichéed, it once again makes the totally nonsense claim that everything a writer writes has to be experienced in real life and thus really limits itself in story, while on the other hand it also seems terribly convoluted and not nearly as stringent and interesting as Citizen Kane. It's still a wonderful film to look at, and Oldman alone is certainly worth the watch, but as a whole it just feels a little bit fluff - as Oscar bait indeed often is.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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