At My Wicz End

In each year's Oscar race, the movie to garner the most nominations is often (but not always) considered the one to beat for Best Picture. This year, with 10 nominations, that movie is Mank, David Fincher's biopic-adjacent tale of how writer Herman J. Mankiewicz crafted the script of Citizen Kane. It has many other elements that seem like catnip to Oscar voters: it's a movie "about movies," it makes a bold stylistic choice (to be presented in black-and-white; though that seems not as rare as you'd think these days), and it's anchored by a scenery-chewing lead performance by Gary Oldman. So, is Mank going to win Best Picture?

Man, I hope not. It's terrible.

I should probably at this point offer the disclaimer that I'm not much of a fan of Citizen Kane. I think I appreciate its place in film history, from its array of clever camera tricks to its stark lighting to its foundational use of the "non-chronological narrative." Take all that, add in the fact that so many of Hollywood's biggest directors worship at Kane's altar, and you can safely say that whatever your favorite movie is, it probably wouldn't exist without Citizen Kane.

But all that is intellectual... and that's how I find the experience of watching Citizen Kane to be too. It's dry, distant, slow. I know it's the Mona Lisa of film (or perhaps The Scream, or Guernica), but it just doesn't do it for me. And Mank is really just begging for you to make comparisons.

Mank is just two-plus hours of trading on the audience's knowledge of Citizen Kane. Its jumbled narrative is constructed to mirror Kane's, with an array of flashbacks meant to build an understanding of the title character. Its endless allusions to Kane range from plot (an election plays an essential role in both stories) to technique (the staging and lighting is painstakingly crafted to match) to even re-staging specific shots (a callout to the famous snow globe drop is the one everyone will spot, but no doubt Kane scholars could list dozens if not hundreds).

David Fincher controls the movie to the nth degree (as he does all his movies). He coaxes heightened, old style acting from his performers. He renders visual effects using the same techniques used in the 40s (or, at least, uses modern techniques to achieve the same look). He adds burn marks to the film to indicate where the reel changes would be. He has on-screen captions rendered as though by typewriter (which incongruously rolls the text in the wrong direction after the typist hits the carriage return). This is a temple of style over substance.

Of course, that's because there's so much style and so little substance. This movie is really only "about the writing of Citizen Kane" as a nominal hook. There's almost no time spent on wrestling with the writing; instead, it's a bunch of simplistic psychoanalysis suggesting that Herman Mankiewicz simply vacuumed up events from a decade of his life and used them to spit out the Kane script in two months. Mank isn't even about the controversy about the shared writing credit between Mankiewicz and Orson Welles; that issue is raised half-heartedly in the final minutes of the film, as though to give a belated point to the entire waste of time.

Indeed, there is only one thing I can say in praise of the film. It has an excellent score that mimics the style of golden era Hollywood with a bombastic, swelling orchestra. There are many composers working today who could have provided such music, but it's more notable in this instance for coming from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. In dozens of movies they've scored (including everything from David Fincher, once they started collaborating), nothing they've done sounds like this. Reznor and Ross discarded their usual form entirely to produce something to fit the subject, and it struck me as more authentic than the mimicry of the film's story and visuals themselves.

It's possible a fan of Citizen Kane might enjoy Mank more than I did? But then, if you really do think of Citizen Kane as the greatest film ever made, then surely there's no way this will stack up, right? I give Mank an F. I wish I had the time back. If indeed it does win the Best Picture Oscar, I will regard it as the worst film I've ever seen to do so.