David Fincher's Mank: Can Hollywood ever be great again?

David Fincher wants you to believe it can. His idea is that if we really pull back the covers of what was wrong with America, California, politics, and Hollywood in the 40s - we can live in a better present now. The only problem with that is the vehicle that he sends that message through. Mank the film is a sexist, all-white world that will be rectified by our anti-hero Herman Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who never got his due - oh wait, except that academy award - for writing Citizen Kane.

Mank, as he wants to be referred to in this film isn’t likable, isn’t charming, and isn’t valiant in this story. He’s not an anti-hero, he’s just a drunk asshole out for himself and his own glory. Fincher wants you to root for him and love him but it’s really hard when all he does is show us time and again why he is the absolute worst.

We learn that he saved an entire village of German, Jewish families only to employ one of them as his personal nurse and alcoholic enabler. We watch his wife be routinely referred to as “Poor Sarah” because he jokingly leaves her to raise their children and cheats on her both physically and emotionally throughout the film. Once in the film she knowingly encourages him to leave a dinner party discussion to comfort a forlorn Miriam Davies, mistress to William Randolph Hearst.

The women in the film, only 4 of them, are set pieces in the best light. Otherwise, they are topless and wearing decorative bangles, the nicest way for me to describe “pasties” here. Did you know this is how secretaries were asked to take dictation in the MGM writer’s room? Wow, what would we do without that piece of insightful misogyny? Fincher treats his female characters horribly and uses them only to move the plot and serve the men in the film.

Miriam Davies is Hearst’s much younger and doting mistress who befriends Mank and begs him to not wound her lover with the release of Kane. This role is played well by Amanda Seyfried but she deserves more than another doe-eyed blonde, arm candy role. Lily Taylor plays Mank’s British secretary, Rita Alexander, who we are led to believe has a purely platonic and tough-love relationship with the writer. However, we see him repeatedly sequestered at the farm writing and living with her as his wife toils away raising their children and managing to survive on the income that he doesn’t gamble away.

Mank’s wife, Sarah Mankiewicz is expertly played by Tuppence Middleton and deserves more screen time. Frankly, hers is a story I would have loved to watch for 2+ hours. What was it like to nurture the selfish indulgences of a “tortured” artist in order to clothe and feed your 3 children? Better yet, what was it like to live destitute after his death at 55 from alcoholism and suffer the consequences of his persistent gambling and philandering? Alas, the realities and fortitude of women are seldom entertaining to the masses….

The last scenes of this movie are meant to make us feel something of disdain toward the “dog-faced” Wells. A nickname given to him by Mank and editor John Houseman. We see Mank accept his academy award and mock the fact that he shares the accolade with the director, Wells. We are led to believe that this struggle for shared credit on the Best Original Screenplay award is unwarranted. Fincher assumes that we will be blindly swayed by Mank’s snide remarks but he’s misguided here. Any viewer worth their salt, who could sit through this 2 hours Hollywood indulgent film, knows a little bit about screen credits. Any writer who gets to look at a script and adds so much as a comma to it gets a screenwriting credit. We also see at the start of the film that the concept is a collaboration between Wells and Mank to take down MGM and Hearst. Not to mention the fact that Wells provided the structure, secretary, housing, and nursing in order to get the script written and worked with a difficult Mank when no one else would.

Mank isn’t even a writer’s hero in this film. He openly distances himself from the budding Writers Guild and repeatedly reminds his brother that he should be grateful for his entry-level writer’s pay. This is never fully addressed in the film as Mank is someone who we are led to believe wants more from society and better equity in the economic landscape. Fincher tells us this with Mank’s support of the gubernatorial candidate and (gasp) potential socialist, Upton Sinclair. Wouldn’t Mank be someone who supports a union instead of feeling his livelihood threatened by those meddling kids in that upstart guild?

This film is not revolutionary nor nostalgic in any way. It’s cringeworthy, dated, and frankly tries too hard to be more than it is. If Fincher really wanted us to understand the harm that yellow journalism caused in the 40s political landscape, then just do a film about that. Or a film about the sexism that WAS prevalent in Hollywood- oh wait that still exists. Finally, is this a reflection on the whiteness of Hollywood in its past? Probably not, because Fincher and Netflix leaned all the way into that narrative with zero qualms. There is exactly ONE Black actor in this film, who says one line, in one scene. There aren’t even any BIPOC actors as extras. It’s so blatantly a choice to be an ALL WHITE FILM. I guess BIPOC people don’t look good in fake black and white films?

Is Hollywood really great again? They’d like you to think that. The AAMPAS nominated this film for best picture and director for Fincher. They love movies about themselves, so much so that this film received the most nominations of any other film this year. They also love movies where they can say “look how far we have come and the changes we have made in our art”. This could very well be the kind of sentiment that Netflix is counting on for the win here and they’re probably right. And because of that, I won’t be surprised if this film wins the best picture award. I’ll be angry, but not surprised.

And there’s the opinion you didn’t ask for...xo Kristi