Mank

 

Gary Oldman and Herman J. Mankiewicz

 

 

             

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, 1941

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orson Welles on the set of Citizen Kane, 1941

MANK                        C                                                                                                                USA  (131 mi)  2020  ‘Scope  d:  David Fincher

This is a business where the buyer gets nothing for his money but a memory.  What he bought still belongs to the man who sold it.  That’s the real magic of the movies.                                     —Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard), co-founder of MGM

Among the most cynically cold films in the Fincher repertoire, making this dead on arrival, despite the interest in reviving unchartered territory, as there is literally no one in the entire picture worth caring about, becoming a glamorized caricature of what might have happened behind the scenes when movie moguls were changing the face of the industry, creating highly appealing spectacles of entertainment that eventually became part of the mainstream culture.  Despite the Hollywood implications, this is a wretchedly sad story about legendary screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), older brother of Joseph L. Mankiewicz who wrote and directed the scathing account of Hollywood backstabbing in ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), revealing how alcoholism consumes a person and his entire career before eventually claiming his life, left with nothing but feeble notions, hallucinations, and delirious tremors that leave you a shattered figure of your former self.  While this hints at the truth behind the writing of CITIZEN KANE (1941), that becomes a mere afterthought in this film, as the man who would be king is king for a day, winning an Academy Award for screenwriting (shared with Orson Welles) before the industry turns its wicked wrath upon him and spits him out as yesterday’s news.  Among the more pitiful pictures in recent memory, a portrait of a sad and forlorn figure who is even sadder than the behemoth giant portrayed in the movie, the larger-than-life portrayal of Charles Foster Kane as William Randolph Hearst, influential newspaper publisher and media mogul.  Written by the director’s father Jack Fincher, a journalist who died in 2003,  (Mank (2020) - Transcript - Scraps from the loft), showing scant affection for Welles, as if still holding a grudge, becoming a poison pen letter to a corrupt Hollywood of the 30’s, a cesspool run by over-privileged business tycoons who cared only about lining their own pockets, where this film is seen as a feeble attempt to fight back against the powers that be, yet indulges in the miserably self-absorbed, continually glorifying the artifice, wallowing in its own pathetic cloud of inebriation, blind to the horrors of the Depression, instead providing a hollow yet glamorized view of the millionaire movie moguls that controlled the industry.  With the hyperliterate Mankiewicz a towering figure walking among them, engaging in witty repartee, known for his biting sarcasm and free-spirited love of drink and gab, even Hearst enjoyed his dazzling conversation, so he fits right into an industry overflowing with magisterial self-indulgence and wealth, pampered by all the pleasures money can bring.  When we see him holed up in the middle of the Mojave desert with a nurse and secretary recovering from injuries suffered in an automobile accident (his leg broken in three places), including provisions (alcohol laced with Seconal) fit for an army regiment, he’s essentially given 60 days to produce a screenplay for the first film of new Hollywood wunderkind Orson Welles, all under the supervision of John Houseman (Sam Troughton), with Mankiewicz dictating to his secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Collins) who then types up the manuscript.  While it’s slow going at first, as he’s not easy to warm up to, continually plying himself with alcohol, subject to blackouts, he quickly makes progress on what is easily the greatest thing he’s ever written, a sprawling epic work that examines the life of an American newspaper tycoon who becomes one of the richest and most influential men in America, yet behind the scenes is a different story, a punishing portrait of a wrenchingly lonely and isolated man, never seemingly satisfied with all his wealth and riches, told with flashbacks, becoming a collection of fragments compressed by time and space, and from multiple points of view, where the daring visual design is all Welles. According to Mankiewicz, “You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours, you can only hope to leave the impression of one.”

The script is subject to historical Hollywood controversy where there are questions of authorship, with film critic Pauline Kael writing a legendary New Yorker essay in 1971 entitled Raising Kane where she attributes Mankiewicz as the sole and exclusive author, suggesting Welles’ grandiose claim of co-authorship is a power play on his part, actively plotting to deprive him of any screen credit, contributing little, if any, to the actual writing.  Rebuffing Kael’s argument is longtime Welles friend and admirer Peter Bogdanovich, who published his own essay entitled The Kane Mutiny in a 1972 article for Esquire that point-by-point disputes Kael’s argument, suggesting her refusal to consult Welles lacked all principles of scholarship, resulting in egregious errors with blatant damage to his reputation.  With various other film critics chiming in, like Andrew Sarris, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Joseph McBride, it appears relatively clear that Mankiewicz wrote the original draft by himself, yet signed a contract giving up any claim to credit, but then changed his mind, subject to various rewrites by Welles, who had complete freedom to make whatever he wanted, suggesting in the end it was a collaborative process, with both named as co-writers of the film.  For the most part, Fincher chose the version that gave the most credit to Mankiewicz and the least credit to Welles, who is barely onscreen and never seen writing a single word of the script.  After receiving a shared Oscar, Mankiewicz quipped, “I am very happy to accept this award in Mr. Welles’s absence because the script was written in Mr. Welles’s absence.”  Fincher’s film doesn’t go into any of those details, ignoring any backstory about how he was selected, fully absorbed in the writing of the original script, suggesting Mankiewicz was extremely proud of his work, but it got bogged down in lawsuits, which eventually affected not only the script but the commercial aspirations of the film, as it was effectively sabotaged at the box office by the movie moguls who at the time controlled what was shown in theaters, opening the door for Hollywood to undercut Welles’s ambition within the industry, targeted by the right-leaning Hearst organization, with the moguls viewing him with leftist contempt, destroying his ending to THE MAGNIFICENT ANDERSONS (1942) and reshooting a new ending, which officially ended any relationship Welles may have had with Hollywood, as he felt betrayed in every respect.  The Mankiewicz career trajectory was quite different, establishing his reputation in the 20’s and 30’s as a theater critic and Berlin war correspondent before becoming a script doctor in Hollywood, called upon to add spicy dialogue, offering splashes of humor, even helping shepherd in the new wave of German émigré’s fleeing the Nazi’s in Europe, including Fritz Lang in FURY (1936), helping him make the American transition to Hollywood by speaking fluent German.  His career ended by basically putting Welles on the map, but in doing so soured all his Hollywood connections, biting the hand that fed him, burning all his bridges in the industry, exemplified in a single bravura scene at the Hurst mansion, a costume dinner party at San Simeon where he shows up uninvited and completely plastered, a court jester standing up to power, going on a lengthy drunken outburst that is cringeworthy and will forever alienate him from anyone left in the business, but he does have the last word, unceremoniously vomiting at this ultra-lavish dinner party where he is eventually shown the door by the host.  If anything, Mankiewicz seems to have thrown his entire career away in continual episodes of bad taste, going on drinking binges where he performs the part of the buffoon, but in the end no one is laughing.

A pale comparison to Welles’ last film The Other Side of the Wind (2018), which is a behind-the-scenes look at some of the characters within the Welles theatrical troupe, exaggerated in all their pomp and glory, consumed by alcohol to the point of dysfunction, but Welles has so much more to offer than Fincher, whose film is strangulating in its own pretentiousness, creating an empty and meaningless experience.  Fincher tries to paint a portrait of Mank as a visionary, one that is hard to believe, as he was a man that seemingly admired both Hearst and Welles, and was just as much a maverick as Welles, with both rubbing elbows with the movie moguls, including Hearst (Charles Dance) along with his partner and muse, actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), where the wealth and richesse of Hollywood was their social class during the Depression, surrounding themselves in pretense and self-indulgence.  In fact KANE and MANK cohabit many of the same spaces, but no clips are shown in the film, instead Fincher searches for the origins of the inventive screenplay by replaying various episodes in the life of Mankiewicz, a Hollywood insider with access to fame and fortune, but a gambling impulse left him perpetually in debt, who likely sees things quite differently than the millionaire class of moguls.  When the banks closed during the Depression, Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) tearfully asks his employees to take a temporary 50 percent pay cut, promising to make his workers whole when the banks reopen, but of course, no repayment ever occurred.  Mankiewicz refused to join the Screen Writers Guild, believing unions were for suckers, but in this case the workers were certainly duped out of their salaries.  Like KANE, much of this film is told in flashbacks, making multiple diversions, becoming bogged down in the trappings of the movie industry, shot digitally in black and white by Erik Messerschmidt, including multiple scenes in near darkness, where Mankiewicz breaks from the political crassness when the industry becomes a walking advertisement for political shenanigans, becoming a voice of liberal dissent in a room full of conservative Republicans, drawing a parallel between the glorious ideals of Upton Sinclair, a muckraking novelist and an outspoken socialist who the industry slays into submission through discrediting negative advertisements that play in theaters across the state when he ran for Governor of California promising to end poverty, turning him into the bogeyman, but his valiant idealism isn’t so far removed from Hearst himself as a young novice trying to have an influence in reshaping the world, or for that matter the brash new visionary upstart in Orson Welles.  Pity that Hearst had to use all his power to destroy young ambition in its tracks, where a shattered idealism becomes intertwined with his own unfulfilled ambitions, leaving a giant void in the heart of the empire, where his castle-like estate is a collection of museum-like art pieces collected from around the globe, but does any of it hold any real meaning?  What this film lacks is what pervades throughout KANE, a personal perspective, an inner drive, something to cut through the emotional coldness and deep cynicism of Mankiewicz, whose openly hostile remarks are contentiously sarcastic and absurdly flippant, but instead Oldman delivers a performance that never convinces, continually uttering glorified phrases that sound nothing like how people really talk, lacking warmth and any real personal connection to anyone, at one point exclaiming “every moment of my life is treacherous.”  In stark contrast, the ingenious script for KANE is legendary, originating in such a desolate place in the middle of nowhere, creating something akin to a revolutionary work.  For Mankiewicz, the confessional tone of the screenplay he wrote was his ultimate expiation.  

While We're Young

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG                 B                    

USA  (97 mi)  2014 d:  Noah Baumbach                   Official site

He’s not evil, he’s just young.

─Josh Shrebnik (Ben Stiller)

The kids are getting older - - that feeling of the inevitability of aging seems to be on the mind of writer/director Noah Baumbach, once seen as one of the cooler heads in the business, whose ruthlessly satirical semi-autobiographical The Squid and the Whale (2005) remains his definitive film, one of the quintessential indie films of the modern era that seems to define our place in the struggle, where his films are snapshots of distinctively uncomfortable and often sad moments in our lives, drawn from his own personal experiences growing up in Brooklyn, where his characters are often going through life-changing moments.  Prone to disappointments, Baumbach’s films feature restless, anxiety-driven characters along the lines of Woody Allen, both known for their acidic wit, but are usually made for a fraction of the cost.  Baumbach’s films have a fun factor associated with them, also exquisite performances, where the audience is literally sharing intimate moments with the people onscreen, much like a theatrical experience, where you hang out for a brief period with a few fictional characters of his own creation, where his films, even his failures, are always time well spent, featuring ingeniously written dialogue of characters in flux, small gems of personal life experiences that reveal our tenuous connection to the constantly changing world around us.   Whatever Baumbach may be, he’s never boring, where the optimum word is usually clever.   Anyone remember the animated opening prologue sequence to Orson Welles’ THE TRIAL (1962), often described as the doorkeeper myth, The Trial: Before The Law - YouTube (2:45), an existential dilemma suggesting that from the outset we cannot escape the inevitability of our fate? 

“Before the Law stands a doorkeeper,” the story begins. “A man from the country comes to this doorkeeper and requests admittance to the Law.  But the doorkeeper says that he can’t grant him admittance now.  The man thinks it over and then asks if he’ll be able to enter later.  ‘It’s possible,’ says the doorkeeper, ‘but not now.’”

The doorkeeper warns the country man that three even more powerful (if unglimpsed) guards lie beyond him—the impenetrable layers of the bureaucracy.  The man waits forever, until his death, until the gatekeeper closes the door meant only for him, but which he can never enter.

   

In Baumbach’s film, it opens with a few lines from Henrik Ibsen’s play The Master Builder, where Solness, an aging character, wonders aloud if he should “open the door” to the younger generation, anxious that they might “break in upon me” and seek “retribution.”  By the end of the film, we hear playing over the final credits Paul McCartney’s song “Let ‘Em In,” Let 'Em In Paul McCartney And Wings Lyrics Photodex ... (5:09):

Someone’s knockin’ at the door
Somebody’s ringin’ the bell
Do me a favor, open the door and let ‘em in

An amusing stroll through a generational divide, the story concerns a couple in their forties Josh and Cornelia, Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts, seemingly at a crossroads in their life, still unsure of themselves as they’ve become creatures of routine, completely dependent upon instant access from the latest electronic gadgetry, though in denial about their approaching middle-age, where earlier dreams of success have eluded them, finding themselves at odds with most of their friends who are fast becoming parents, where the focus of their attention shifts to their children, leaving Josh and Cornelia on the outside looking in.  As a result, when the opportunity comes to hang out with a younger couple in their 20’s, Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver, a revelation, and the underutilized Amanda Seyfried), both are infused with a newfound energy from the younger generation’s more carefree lifestyle, finding it invigorating, much less pressure, and somewhat liberating to be youthful again.   Mirroring the director himself (who is age 45), Josh plays a 44-year old documentary filmmaker who has a strained relationship with success, having had some degree of earlier critical acclaim for his first film, but feels the daunting pressure of living under the shadow of Cornelia’s more acclaimed father (for whom she works), Leslie Breitbart (Charles Grodin), a Maysles or Wiseman style documentarian considered a legend in the field.  Still struggling for the past ten years with the shape and editing of a film he can’t seem to finish about the political, historical and militaristic connections of the last 50 years, (“It’s really about America!”), including a lengthy interview of aging, leftist intellectual Ira Mandelstam (Peter Yarrow, from Peter, Paul, and Mary), mimicking Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), which also includes an interview with an aging intellectual, yet here the audience immediately senses Mandelstam is the most boring creature on earth, yet Josh refuses to cut any of his precious footage, leaving his film in an unwieldy state of seven hours long.  Making matter worse, his grant funding has run dry, leaving them precariously on the edge of financial difficulty, where he might be forced to swallow his pride and borrow money from his father-in-law, something that eats away at him, as if diminishing his own self-esteem or masculinity.  When he discovers Jamie is a budding filmmaker already familiar with his work, he’s not only flattered, but thinks perhaps he might be of some help offering an objective perspective, discussing many of the ideas on his film, but instead Josh gets sucked into Jamie’s first film project about reconnecting with a long lost friend on Facebook who turns out to be a suicidal war veteran.  While Josh sees himself more as a seasoned professional offering tutorial guidance and expertise, internally he wonders when he stopped being young and ambitious and instead began thinking of himself as something of a disappointment, where he’s been bogged down working on the same film for so long that he’s worried it may never get finished.  Little wonder, then, that he leaves his stagnant life behind and runs off with Jamie as his newly discovered best friend.  

Zany and hilariously “in-the-moment,” hanging out with the refreshingly different younger couple brings unforeseen energy into their lives.  Living in a warehouse loft apartment in Harlem that is surprisingly quant and authentic, the walls filled with vinyl records and furniture they built themselves, Cornelia notices with some surprise, “It’s like their apartment is full of stuff we threw out.”  Filled with the collected clutter of whatever appealed to them at the moment, Jamie seems interested in everything, always eager to try new things, where his idea of living is experiencing things as unfiltered as possible, playing board games instead of watching TV, where Darby makes organic ice cream in an assortment of specialty flavors.  Wearing T-shirts that say “Some crappy band,” or “Some college I didn’t go to,” Darby’s darker impulses include exploring empty subway tunnels or taking hip-hop dance classes with Cornelia, who can’t figure out the dance moves, asking quizzically “What kind of class is this?” while Josh and Jamie ride bikes through the city streets (which Josh cuts short due to arthritic knees) or go shopping for fedora hats, where Josh confesses, “Before we met the only two feelings I had left were ‘wistful’ and ‘disdainful.’”  When trying to recollect a pop reference, Josh instinctively pulls out his smartphone, but Jamie and Darby prefer the mystery of trying to remember without an electronic gadget that can find easy, readily available answers for you.  And if they can’t remember, then they simply move on to something else.  It’s reminiscent of an era of bringing electronic calculators into the classroom, where students were allowed to do all the calculating electronically, even on tests, where previous generations were forced to memorize all the formulas and do all their own calculations.  Curiously, inverting one’s expectations, it’s the “younger” couple that prefers the “older” challenge.  In a dinner scene with friends their same age, Josh and Cornelia, along with others, are all seen on their smartphones, where someone utters the rationalization, “It used to be rude, but now it’s accepted.”  Similarly, when Josh hears a song he hated when it was released in the 80’s but suddenly finds inspiring when heard again, Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long,” Lionel Richie - All Night Long (All Night) - YouTube (3:48), or the dreadfully overplayed ROCKY III (1982) theme song “Eye of the Tiger,” Survivor - Eye Of The Tiger - YouTube (4:10), he instantly recalls, “I remember when this song was just bad,” now suddenly being rediscovered by those hearing it for the first time.  This trip down memory lane, however, gets derailed when they decide to attend a spiritual cleansing that involves a fake shaman and hallucinogenic drugs, where the outcome grows more grotesque than absurd, where they’re obviously closing a moral line of questionable bad taste, where it also serves as a reminder of just what, exactly, have they gotten themselves into?  While always maintaining he was a purist, willing to spend ten years refusing to allow any phony commercialism to taint his movies, Josh always believed filmmaking was “capturing the truth of the experience.”  When he realizes Jamie’s work is an utter fraud and fabrication that conveniently accepts deceitful motives, staging events for real life and passing it off as truthful, for instance, Josh finds this an irreconcilable difference, a perversion of the truth.  While the film loses some of its sanity, with Ben Stiller having a meltdown and reverting to form as one of the more contemptible characters onscreen today, for further evidence, see Greenberg (2010), but Baumbach wrote the film especially for him while attempting to expose how what passes for the truth today is altogether different than previous generations, having been raised in an era of instant gratification where images are captured by cellphones and posted on Twitter or YouTube, where there is no longer an editing process, per se, but an immediate flood of public opinion that determines what’s essentially the truth.  This is a film that you want to like more, but it grows curiously weaker by the end, lost in its own ambiguity, where even the title feels somewhat lame, but overall it has more inventive charm and pizazz, even if it’s not altogether a success, than most other directors working today.