Mank
“Mank jubilantly leans into the sexism and racism of pre-war Hollywood.”
Title: Mank (2020)
Director: David Fincher 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writer: Jack Fincher 👨🏼🇺🇸
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸
Technical: 1.5/5
I liked David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999) and I loved his 2010 film, The Social Network. But I did not like Mank, the director’s latest effort that came out on Netflix last month.
Unless you belong to the sect of viewers who harbor an abundance of nostalgia for sleazy Tinseltown wheelings and dealings of the 1930s, there isn’t much you can sink your teeth into. As writer Cole Simons puts more delicately, “Mank is a niche film made for an audience of film lovers and those with knowledge of the happenings of the time.”
As someone who does love film but who isn’t versed in the narrow confines of pre-war American politics and cinema, I couldn’t follow the plot worth a damn. (There is a plot, right?) The constant name-dropping and industry references felt insurmountable without opening forty different Wikipedia tabs mid-watch, and that simply doesn’t make for a good viewing experience. For me, the film fell apart after the 20-minute mark. As for the full two-plus-hours extravaganza, it felt like an eon had passed before I could be excused from detention.
It’s nice to look at, though, I’ll give it that. Props to the director of photography, Erik Messerschmidt. But if you’re looking for a richly textured black-and-white feature with a bit more under the hood, you’re better off putting on fellow Netflix Original Roma (2018), or other works like Embrace the Serpent (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019). Better yet, just rewatch Mank’s source inspiration of Citizen Kane (1941).
Gender: 2/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE
Amanda Seyfried plays starlet Marion Davies, the mistress of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. But she exists only as an accessory to the film’s central story: the Herman “Mank” Mankiewicz biography.
Even when Marion shares scenes with other women, such as hobnobbing at a party with socialites, no two women ever exchange lines about anything other than a man throughout the film’s entirety.
Mank’s personal secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Collins) also comes painfully close to passing the Bechdel Test during a conversation with Mank’s housekeeper, Fraulein Freda (Monika Gossmann):
Alas, these women firmly orbit men like moons stuck to a planet, and Fincher finds no interest in extricating them otherwise.
In minor roles, the portrayal of women leans into the sexism of the era it so jubilantly depicts. I leave you with this early scene, which—for inscrutable reasons—drops a mostly-naked and entirely silent typist into a room of fully dressed men who talk shop and gladhand:
Race: 1/5
In an incredibly depressing game of I Spy, I spotted two visible characters of color among the film’s 137 credited actors. One holds the illustrious role of being a bellhop with no lines. The second appearance fares better; a supporter of governor-hopeful Upton Sinclair speaks to the camera, but his dialogue still caps out at six sentences.
Although—do white actors in redface count as representation?
Ah, the good old days of Hollywood. *wipes tear* Also, let’s keep pretending Gary Oldman, the biopic’s leading actor as “Mank” himself, has never used the n-word while decrying “political correctness” during an interview.
Snark aside, I should note that English actor Ferdinand Kingsley, who plays the producer Irving Thalberg in a sizable role, is a quarter Gujurati Indian. But given his character’s German-Jewish heritage, Kingsley passes for white. So there’s not a whole lot to read into about that, or about the inclusion of any other non-white actors in Mank. Because they don’t really exist.
Bonus for Age: +1.00
More than 1 in 5 Americans are over the age of 60, but in film they only see about 1 in 10 speaking roles. Considering this underrepresentation, the central role of Oldman (who is 62 years old at the time of this review) does buck norms.
Deduction for Religion: -0.50
The irony of Oldman playing an important Jewish figure such as Mankiewicz should not be lost on us. In a 2014 interview, he defended the notoriously anti-Semitic Mel Gibson by asking rhetorically, “The policeman who arrested him has never used the word n----- or that fucking Jew?” Oldman goes on to add that Gibson “is in a town that’s run by Jews.”
Sure, he apologized once the backlash arrived. As it should have, considering how that same conversation contained other hit singles like the aforementioned n-bomb, defending Alec Baldwin after he yelled at a photographer for being a “cocksucking f-g,” and whinging that it wasn’t fair he couldn’t call Nancy Pelosi “a fucking useless cunt … but Bill Maher and Jon Stewart can, and nobody’s going to stop them from working because of it.”
First of all: Who’s stopping Oldman from working? Or Mel Gibson, for that matter? As Oldman headlines this year’s anticipated Fincher film, just a glance over your shoulder will remind you that he also won an Academy Award a few years back for The Darkest Hour. For a town supposedly “run by Jews,” Oldman seems to be doing just fine.
Mediaversity Grade: F 1.67/5
This may have been six years in the making, but I’m holding out for Fincher’s next. Unless you’re gagging for the sexism and whiteness of Old Hollywood, I just don’t see how Mank is relevant today.
Like Mank? Try these other works about Hollywood.
Hollywood
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019)
La La Land (2016)