Mank Analysis

Mank (2020)

Directed by: David Fincher

Written by: Jack Fincher

Streaming on Netflix.

In this day and age of franchises and big tentpole films Netflix has been the only studio to be so generous to auteurs. It gives them money, and let's them make whatever they want to make - Alfonso Cuaron's Roma, Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, Charlie Kaufman's I'm Thinking of Ending Things and now David Fincher's Mank. These films are dream projects and they wouldn't be possible to make, at least in the way they want - if it was not for Netflix.

This film immediately plunges us into the world of Hollywood in the 1930s. With the opening titles, and the images that follow - we don't see pristine g that we usually see in a David Fincher film, it sort of replicates the look of the films made back then. This is unlike Cuaron's interpretation of capturing the past - I liked that more - because a film made in 2020 capturing the 1930s will be different from a film made in 1950 capturing the same world. This variation could also be artistic in a sense, how Roma was made.

I'm not a person who would take sides of either Welles or Mank, I respect both of them and with this film - I understood that they had certain differences and I have respect for the both of them now. After knowing that Mank had written that script, while going through troubles himself - it makes it a more personal story. I loved how the way, the film kicks off - 'there are millions to be made, and your only competition is a bunch of idiots'. It feels like Mank has a time blur throughout the time he's writing the screenplay, and only after writing it does he realize - that it's the best thing he's ever written.

It also captures how some things don't matter anymore, like the screenwriting credit here - though he fights for it, after a point he lets it go. He knows that he's done it and he's good at it, this only makes me wonder how many legendary artists, creators and sportspersons in the world are unheard of, because of bad luck or circumstances. Citizen Kane is a film that represents the megalomania that humans feel, and this film, Mank, about the story of Citizen Kane - is no lesser in representing the same.