Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

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knives
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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#101 Post by knives » Mon Dec 07, 2020 7:31 am

swo17 wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:25 am
Button above Gone Girl? :shock:
I’m in that boat, but I also think GG is Fincher’s worst by a significant amount.

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TheKieslowskiHaze
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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#102 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Mon Dec 07, 2020 7:44 am

swo17 wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:25 am
Button above Gone Girl? :shock:
I would put Button even higher than they do, but I understand that makes me a weirdo. I would even put Dragon Tattoo much higher, another Fincher I think is underrated. But I think they're on the money to put Mank in the middle and Zodiac on top.

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Roscoe
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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#103 Post by Roscoe » Mon Dec 07, 2020 8:56 am

Funny, I'd entirely forgotten ALIEN 3, which fact alone puts it above the abominable BENJAMIN BUTTON.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#104 Post by Roger Ryan » Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:07 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sun Dec 06, 2020 4:30 pm
... As for your alternate beginning with Welles coming to Mank with the story, which would establish his relationship with Hearst... well, that completely ruins the beauty of the film for me. Discovering the depths of his relationship as so emotionally tied to his existential powerlessness is the Rosebud of this story, and to me that would be like asking for Citizen Kane to be recut with a zoom-in on the sled's title in the first flashback, and then continue the narrative with the characters trying to discover what this mysterious Rosebud is, playing catchup with the audience's knowledge for two hours rather than engage us in the journey...
I was not suggesting the complicated relationship Mankiewicz had with Hearst or Davies should be spelled out in an opening scene; only that the "teaser" be set up that Hearst be the model. Through the flashbacks, the viewer then learns why Mankiewicz would settle on this choice. Or, perhaps, the agreed upon subject is a newspaper publisher, and the film then reveals Mankiewicz's motivation for pursuing this concept. As it is, without knowledge of the whole backstory, the viewer is told midway through the film that a screenplay Mankiewicz is working on appears to be modeled on Hearst which, to my mind, is a bit like revealing Kane's dying word midway through Welles' film.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#105 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:00 am

That’s a fair response, though the key to me is that Mank’s relationship with Hearst isn’t the source of his existential disease, it’s his powerlessness to contend with not only external foes but internal ones, which is crucial to establish without Hearst. Otherwise that would give Hearst too much power and minimize the themes through making the story too specific, rather than broadly about Mank’s own dissatisfaction with his position, lack of hope or self-esteem, etc. This is a film about how he finds that hope or inspiration to exercise his will to matter and initiate change, not that his will mattering orbits solely around Hearst.

This is also where the alcoholic allegory is woven into the story, in the reality that the problem stems from the self not only from the booze. If these evil systems were actually the independent variable driving the blame for Mank’s/our struggles, that would be like making a movie where alcohol is the demon to contend with, victimizing and disempowering Mank’s accountability. The uncomfortable truth is that, yeah the systems aren’t great, but Mank creates his own trap for reasons beyond specific signifiers due to his own issues with acceptance. He continuously gets in his own way, falls prey to distractions and avoidance, and can’t just shine the spotlight of his ennui away from himself onto outsiders and point- or when he does, that reveals a deep tragedy even if he’s part right. I would struggle much harder to relate to that ‘other’ movie, but we obviously see this film differently. After a second watch, I think it’s most like The Social Network in its universality in the challenges accepting life on life’s terms, the need to be seen and receive credibility to mark one’s worth, the difficulty to love oneself and the craving to get it from the outside world as proof of life.

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aox
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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#106 Post by aox » Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:37 am

Good film, and I appreciate the write-ups in here, as usual. Gary Oldman really is a treasure. I am certainly in the boat that this is a complex work, but sits in the middle of Fincher's oeuvre for me.

I have a technical question. This is not so much a complaint but more of a curiosity, as I found the black and white cinematography to be gorgeous. Fincher went to all of the trouble to reproduce or mimick a movie made in the 1930s/40s with lens flares, distortions, cigarette burns, etc... Why wide then, and not 1:33 or some similar aspect ratio? I have to admit I did find this a little distracting to a minor degree.

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TheKieslowskiHaze
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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#107 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Mon Dec 07, 2020 1:25 pm

aox wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:37 am
I have a technical question. This is not so much a complaint but more of a curiosity, as I found the black and white cinematography to be gorgeous. Fincher went to all of the trouble to reproduce or mimick a movie made in the 1930s/40s with lens flares, distortions, cigarette burns, etc... Why wide then, and not 1:33 or some similar aspect ratio? I have to admit I did find this a little distracting to a minor degree.
For me, it seemed to bridge the old and the new. The movie was in black and white, with some old-fashioned aesthetic accoutrements like cig burns, but it never truly looks like a movie from that era. It's widescreen, for one, but also the B&W photography looks mostly cleaner and silkier than the grainy, higher contrast 40's movies like Kane. No one would mistake this for an artifact; it looks new.

My generous assessment is that it speaks to the timelessness of the movie's themes about commerce, art, and politics. Its style, like its ideas, is both then and now.

My ungenerous assessment is that the movie, at times, doesn't look that great (but that's mostly about my personal taste).

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#108 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Dec 07, 2020 3:55 pm

Roger Ryan wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:07 am
I was not suggesting the complicated relationship Mankiewicz had with Hearst or Davies should be spelled out in an opening scene; only that the "teaser" be set up that Hearst be the model. Through the flashbacks, the viewer then learns why Mankiewicz would settle on this choice. Or, perhaps, the agreed upon subject is a newspaper publisher, and the film then reveals Mankiewicz's motivation for pursuing this concept. As it is, without knowledge of the whole backstory, the viewer is told midway through the film that a screenplay Mankiewicz is working on appears to be modeled on Hearst which, to my mind, is a bit like revealing Kane's dying word midway through Welles' film.
I know I already responded to this, but I think the conceptualization of Mank’s "Rosebud" is going to greatly affect how one approaches this film. I went back and re-read the semi-recent Citizen Kane film club discussion that we both participated in, and I definitely invite others to do the same, as I found such striking similarities in my and others' readings of Kane and Rosebud in connection with Mank.
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I really like Sloper's reading of Rosebud as a symbol for "potential" rather than innocence. Just like the sled, for Kane, is a tangible symbol for what is futile to approach, Mank’s confrontation with Hearst is a tangible encounter that left an impression on him by dismounting the man from the complacency of his blind existence. The dinner party sobered Mank to his own weakness, by demonstrating that his only means of control are through defense mechanisms (alcohol, gambling, jester humor, momentarily outwitting others with the spoken word). That was the blow that shattered his feelings of control by revealing them to be facades. Mank's crisis is not sourced in Hearst and the 1% 'wronging' him, it's much sadder than that; it's in that elusive feeling he now has branded within him, the truth that he desperately tried to cover up. He resents Hearst for stripping him of his defenses that gave him a false sense of power, and forcing a sobriety to his insignificance and other existential discomforts he's spent his life successfully hiding from; but he resents himself more for the accuracy of this cutting statement. He pines for that feeling of control back, which he previously sought through avoidance techniques, and would continue to do since. Mank didn't remain conscious from that moment forward, planning to get back at Hearst, so it wouldn't have made sense narratively to establish that relationship. He took the job for hire from Welles, and only came to want credit at the end, when he finishes the screenplay and ponders on his life (the confession to his brother of feeling "washed up" and living a life devoid of meaning). The way the dinner party/organ grinder's monkey scene is cut up with the present-day scenes, where Mank has a change of heart and asks for writer's credit, helps shape this as a revelation- but I'm not convinced that it's rooted in revenge, so much as to prove his worth beyond an organ grinder's monkey to himself and to the world, a desperate attempt to grasp that "potential" that feels so elusive, and tragically mostly is.

Mank's Rat Trap quote from late in his life helps support this reading because Fincher's film supposes, for the purpose of narrative, that Mank became 'aware' of these traps through Hearst's speech that called him out on his own trap-setting. Mank's quote of admission of being his own worst enemy is also an admission that Hearst was right, just like- as I said upthread- Irving was right in his equally-skewering honest declaration of Mank's character defects. Asking for credit has less to do with hurting Hearst than it does for helping himself become more than an organ grinder's monkey, even if he knows that he cannot escape his fate and his history beyond this small gesture.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#109 Post by RitrovataBlue » Mon Dec 07, 2020 4:47 pm

I'll admit that I have yet to see Mank, but I was unsurprisingly disappointed to see a few screencaps circulating on Twitter in which an intertitle announces that we're in 1930 immediately before showing characters discussing Universal's horror cycle, mentioning both Frankenstein and The Wolf Man by name. Of course, the Universal horror cycle had not yet begun in 1930; Frankenstein and Dracula would be released in 1931 and The Wolf Man wouldn't debut until after Citizen Kane - which, correct me if I'm wrong, means *after Mank ends.* Of course, there are few if any period pieces without some ahistorical faults, but this one strikes me as particularly egregious. First, it's monumentally obvious and should have been noticed by someone (anyone) in post. Second, it strikes me as disingenuous to make a film about Hollywood history when one doesn't even know what year Frankenstein came out. Either of the Finchers should have known enough about movies off the top of his head to realize the error if he cared enough about his subject matter to want to turn it into a film in the first place.

The error strikes me as being in the same anti-cinephilic vain as Fincher's use of digital effects to "age" the opening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. To that film, Fincher even went so far as to add a flicker effect approximating the experience of watching a hand-cranked projector - an effect that has nothing to do with either the age or actual aesthetics of early cinema, but which was intended to impart a disingenuous "old-timey" effect to the film. In any case, it failed miserably.

All of this is to say that I don't think Fincher is a cinephile or even particularly fond of old movies, and as such is underqualified to take on a project of significant film-historical interest as this one. I intend to watch Mank, but my expectations at present are low.

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knives
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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#110 Post by knives » Mon Dec 07, 2020 5:02 pm

What does knowing about films matter to this film which the makers have admitted isn’t at all about movies.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#111 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Dec 07, 2020 5:16 pm

I'm just gonna reiterate that if one goes into this expecting a movie that is functioning to be about Hollywood history, you're gonna be disappointed just like all the folks who are fixated on The Social Network's historical inaccuracies. The milieu is used to draw out universal themes via establishing playful spaces to flaunt egos, as well as oppressive institutional barriers to actualizing those egos. That specific scene in question in one of the best in the entire film
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for giving us a room of the core screwball writers using rapidly-shifting screwball dialogue to have fun exercising their greatest weapon in their wits to run a gag on studio execs. So it really doesn't matter whether its content is historically accurate, just as the room of writers have no intention of delivering this idea in script- it's hilarious to pitch a monster movie to von Sternberg, for the same reason it's funny to tell Selznick to show movies for free in the streets as a cheeky non-solution to his capitalist concerns because they were poorly phrased.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#112 Post by willoneill » Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:54 pm

RitrovataBlue wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 4:47 pm
I'll admit that I have yet to see Mank, but I was unsurprisingly disappointed to see a few screencaps circulating on Twitter in which an intertitle announces that we're in 1930 immediately before showing characters discussing Universal's horror cycle, mentioning both Frankenstein and The Wolf Man by name. Of course, the Universal horror cycle had not yet begun in 1930; Frankenstein and Dracula would be released in 1931 and The Wolf Man wouldn't debut until after Citizen Kane - which, correct me if I'm wrong, means *after Mank ends.*
Although I really liked Mank and it's on (and will undoubtedly stay on) my 2020 Top Ten list, this scene really threw me. It's both egregious, and goes on for a bit, to the point that the "what the fuck?" in my head was drowning out the dialogue. But it's early in the film, and I kinda forgot about it pretty quickly.

At the same time, finding factual faults in biopics is just an unhealthy drinking game at this point, and I've given up even debating them. Who am I anyway, the UK Minister of Culture?

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#113 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Dec 09, 2020 2:11 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 3:55 pm
SpoilerShow
... He pines for that feeling of control back, which he previously sought through avoidance techniques, and would continue to do since. Mank didn't remain conscious from that moment forward, planning to get back at Hearst, so it wouldn't have made sense narratively to establish that relationship. He took the job for hire from Welles, and only came to want credit at the end, when he finishes the screenplay and ponders on his life (the confession to his brother of feeling "washed up" and living a life devoid of meaning). The way the dinner party/organ grinder's monkey scene is cut up with the present-day scenes, where Mank has a change of heart and asks for writer's credit, helps shape this as a revelation- but I'm not convinced that it's rooted in revenge, so much as to prove his worth beyond an organ grinder's monkey to himself and to the world, a desperate attempt to grasp that "potential" that feels so elusive, and tragically mostly is.
I really do agree with your assessment of what is motivating Mankiewicz in Mank, but I simply don't understand why you feel it wouldn't make sense narratively to acknowledge, in an opening scene, that Mankiewicz has someone in mind for the powerful man Welles wants to make a film about and will "write what he knows" in developing American. This idea doesn't change how the audience gradually learns about the dynamics of Mankiewicz's relationship to Hearst or Davies, nor does it change the motivation for Mankiewicz to request screen credit after completing the script. Actually, establishing that this is a job-for-hire with no expectation for screen credit at the beginning would make his change of heart more dramatic in the closing scene (as it is, the viewer is informed about the "no credit" clause in his contract at the same time Mankiewicz is asking for credit which significantly lowers the stakes of the climatic scene in the film). Also, I don't think Mankiewicz, in real life, wrote the Kane script as revenge; again, Mankiewicz was simply "writing what he knew". Mank, on the other hand, does want to suggest revenge was part of the stew, especially by bringing up that tired old anecdote about Davis' genitalia.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#114 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 09, 2020 3:04 pm

I think that the revenge element is another superficial defense mechanism to make tangible what is actually vulnerable powerlessness. Often times we lash out at people in anger, a more concrete emotion, because we are hurting and confused inside. So whether or not revenge is part of it, it's only scratching at the margins of the core themes. The reason I don't think Hearst needs to be introduced earlier is that the film essentially evolves from Mank playfully wasting his life away, having fun toying around with folks (including a harmless throwaway introduction to Hearst, which is key for establishing Mank's unconscious ignorance to these philosophical pains at this point), etc. into a darker realization that confronts this sadness of existential merit, which gradually sneaks up on us just like it does for him). It's important for us to see Mank fluttering around a movie set bantering with Davies and puckishly jabbing with Hearst as well as floating in the peripheries of multiple powerful men- not just Hearst- until several of these men confront him with a painful truth that breaks him (remember that Irving basically says the same thing to Mank before Hearst does).

I guess including that clarity wouldn't make or break the film for me, but it's far more interesting to broadly engage with the character on a wider scope to focus on his journey from ego-comfortability to the sobering, shattering ego-deflation, before projecting that pain at the man at the top of the pile. I felt Fincher trusted us to look around at the bigger picture rather than focus on one central dynamic, and I appreciated that. I don't think the movie is about why Mank is targeting Hearst, but about what he does with the rancid feelings inside of him as a result of Hearst, Irving, etc. triggering that awareness. If he identified Hearst and said he would "write what he knows" then yes, the ending would be more powerful if one approaches the film based on the analysis that this has been all about Hearst and him; but I think it's a far more comprehensive and dubious evolution of a 'feeling', and the road to processing that is what makes the movie great to me. I think we are just reading the film differently, because I don't think the 'climax' is directly tied to the source as much as the entire development of Mank's unraveling of security, which has been perpetrated by himself and his relationship with a whole system based on a progressive accumulation of poison sinking in; he is channeling all of his limited power and skills into a work born from the outside world reminding him that he's small. I don't need Hearst to be the face of that from act one, because the meat of the film is more abstract in my eyes.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#115 Post by schellenbergk » Wed Dec 09, 2020 4:01 pm

willoneill wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:05 pm
Saw Mank last night ...

First things first, yes Mank is definitely from the perspective that Citizen Kane was written entirely by Mankiewicz. Welles is actually barely a character in the film, really only having one significant scene, near the end when Mank decides he wants to renegotiate his contract that stated Mank wouldn’t be credited for the script. Earlier in the pandemic, I rewatched Citizen Kane and all of the bonus features on the Warner set, including RKO 281. Mank and RKO 281 might as well be talking about two completely different sets of people.

As for judging Mank the film on its own merits, I definitely need to give it another watch two weeks from now when it hits Netflix. On the whole, I enjoyed watching the film, but it always felt a little off. One aspect is the look of the film. I tried to describe it to my wife as being blurry but not blurry, and that I felt I couldn’t make out the images even though I could. I can’t explain it better than that. The darker night and interior scenes are very dim and unfocused, and the daylight scenes are blown out. I also notice that Fincher added reel changes markers to the film, just for the look of it I assume (I didn’t notice any single frames of porn though, haha). But if I went into the film without knowing anything, I definitely wouldn’t have guessed Fincher directed it. I didn’t feel like it was anything like his other films.
Nicely put. I was looking forward to this a lot, and there are many good things in it, but ultimately I was underwhelmed.

The authorship question bothered me more than I thought it would. This film portrays Welles as contributing nothing to the script, which is certainly what my spouse took away.

On the plus side, it has a different visual style than Fincher’s other films, but the lead performance felt like it was hitting one note over and over (this may be the script).

Netflix sent me an email asking me to give it a thumbs up or down. I’m genuinely torn. I want to see them creating more serious content. But this particular film felt off the mark.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#116 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Dec 10, 2020 5:50 pm

I enjoyed it. That gritted-teeth brand of cynicism that defined Fincher before isn't around here, and the political commentary seems more straight ahead then usual for him. It's closer to the more character-based moments of Zodiac which is some of the highest praise I can give any movie.
RitrovataBlue wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 4:47 pm
I'll admit that I have yet to see Mank, but I was unsurprisingly disappointed to see a few screencaps circulating on Twitter in which an intertitle announces that we're in 1930 immediately before showing characters discussing Universal's horror cycle, mentioning both Frankenstein and The Wolf Man by name. Of course, the Universal horror cycle had not yet begun in 1930; Frankenstein and Dracula would be released in 1931 and The Wolf Man wouldn't debut until after Citizen Kane - which, correct me if I'm wrong, means *after Mank ends.*
The furthest back it goes in the timeline is 1934. You probably saw some doctored pics.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#117 Post by rawlinson » Thu Dec 10, 2020 6:46 pm

It definitely is set in 1930. There's an on-screen direction right before the scene stating it's 1930. About 14 mins in.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#118 Post by Roscoe » Thu Dec 10, 2020 7:45 pm

rawlinson wrote:
Thu Dec 10, 2020 6:46 pm
It definitely is set in 1930. There's an on-screen direction right before the scene stating it's 1930. About 14 mins in.
Confirmed -- I endured the movie at least to this point, and it most definitely said 1930.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#119 Post by aox » Thu Dec 10, 2020 8:34 pm

Did anyone else compare this to Trumbo? I think Mank is a superior film, but I am one of the rare people on this board who really liked Trumbo and Cranston's performance. It was in the back of my mind comparing him to Oldman.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#120 Post by felipe » Thu Dec 10, 2020 8:55 pm

I wonder how the film plays to someone who's not so familiar with Citizen Kane or the story behind it. I guess it'd still be possible to understand the film, but does it hold the appeal?

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#121 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Dec 10, 2020 9:09 pm

I think The Social Network was a pretty faithful Kane re-imagining, and while there are certainly some associations here, that's not the main draw. It plays with film history (mostly screwball, though many people seem to have missed this when evaluating certain scenes) but firmly stews in Fincher's favorite themes of uncomfortable, nebulous existential darkness in humanity. I'm completely puzzled at the comments in this thread wondering where Fincher's fingerprints are.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#122 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 12, 2020 3:50 pm

Much better poster

Image

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#123 Post by Never Cursed » Tue Dec 15, 2020 4:04 am

VFX reel (with what are presumably extremely minor spoilers within)

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#124 Post by Never Cursed » Fri Feb 12, 2021 4:50 am

I came really close to liking this struggle for self-actualization as framed through a goofy inversion of the structure of the struggler-in-question's masterpiece, but the burden of Fincher the younger's affected style overwhelmed me here in a way distinct from even his worst films. This is a remarkably show-off-y movie, one loaded with distracting directorial choices of questionable necessity to the actual aim of the thing. How much, really, can reel-change marks (for this film shot on digital and smeared on my television screen in hideous Netflix macroblockovision) add to this experience? The film's best scenes are those involving the high-wire verbal trapeze acts that its various writer characters compulsively seek out, from the irreverence of a monster movie pitch to the nauseating venom of a climactic friendship-obliterating screed, and I only wish that the director of the movie so reverent of these writers (though not enough to know to beat Eric Roth away with a stick) had gotten out of their way a bit.

Also, and I don't know which scenarist should be shunted with the credit for it, but I haven't cringed watching a movie in some time like I did during the explicitly political scenes, my god. To be clear, I am willing to give a film lots of rope in ignoring the hard-and-fast literal truth of events or attitudes so long as they hit some level of emotional verisimilitude or there is an interesting point to those manipulations. This film mostly does that when it comes to the actual film industry within which its principals operate, but hearing Amanda Seyfried go "gee, that Hitler guy sure is creepers!" and then hearing Charles Dance respond "no no, the Germans are a kind people, he surely won't be around for long" followed by Gary Oldman doing the dialogic equivalent of smug eyeroll to camera was something else entirely. Jettison every line that makes reference to Hitler or Upton Sinclair (along with the unreal, second-hand embarrassing reveal of the actor playing Sinclair) and you instantly have a better movie. I didn't hate this, but man is it a disappointing end to the hiatus of a talented director. There is a more interesting take on this milieu coming.

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Re: Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

#125 Post by ford » Fri Feb 12, 2021 11:07 am

Terrible, terrible decision to film in (digital) black and white. Digital black and white looks nothing like inky black film, first of all. And second, wouldn’t it be more revelatory to see this lost era with the clarity of modern cinematography? 2021 1930s will never look like the actual 1930s so why attempt cigarette burns and mono and all that silliness? It took me out of the story rather than bring me in.

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