Rendező:
David FincherForgatókönyvíró:
Jack FincherOperatőr:
Erik MesserschmidtSzereplők:
Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Charles Dance, Tom Burke, Joseph Cross, Tuppence Middleton, Leven Rambin, Tom Pelphrey, Arliss Howard (több)Streaming (1)
Tartalmak(1)
Az 1930-as évek Hollywoodjának metszően szellemes újraértékelése az Aranypolgárt befejezni igyekvő alkoholista forgatókönyvíró, Herman J. Mankiewicz szemén keresztül. (Netflix)
Recenziók (14)
Mank attracts viewers primarily through its unraveling of the tangle of influences that led the title character, an alcoholic screenwriter, to write the celebrated Citizen Kane. However, the actual writing of that screenplay plays second or rather third fiddle in Mank, as there is no depiction of the classic’s shooting, the great Tom Burke as Orson Welles appears on screen for a total of maybe three minutes, and Mank isn’t very faithful to the historical facts; for example, it presents Welles’s involvement in the drafting of the screenplay in accordance with myths that have long since been debunked. In fact, Mank is rather generally focused on the workings of Hollywood in the 1930s and during the Great Depression, and to roughly the same extent it deals with the political mood of the time and the affair involving the 1934 California gubernatorial race, which is understandably not much of a draw for viewers. But that’s not the problem. Rather, the problem is that none of this is rendered in a very engaging way. Though I fully understand Fincher’s desire to make a film based on his father’s long-shelved screenplay, that screenplay is unfortunately about uninterestingly written and poorly defined characters who frequently deliver witty and precisely aimed lines, but what good is that when there is no one to build any kind of relationship with on the screen? Furthermore, the second half of the film fundamentally loses traction and, with the exception of a drunken scene at a fancy-dress dinner party, it doesn’t contain much that’s remarkable. Tim Burton's Ed Wood, for example, was made with a similar intention and turned out much better. Mank is also related to Citizen Kane in its attempt at an audio-visual retro-form, which, though impressive, is not in any way consistent (after all, it was shot in widescreen digital), with a complicated narrative structure full of flashbacks (which are rather oddly skipped between in places) and a lot of different allusions (visual quotes, references to sleds and rosebuds, for example). Therefore, it is definitely necessary to see Citizen Kane before watching Mank. And though it’s fortunately not entirely necessary, it helps to know something about the key figures of Hollywood society at the time.
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Idén Fincher, akárcsak Nolan, a közönségfilm paraméterein kívül eső fétisének egy túlzásba vitt variációjához nyúlt. Mank az ő Nagy retró-szépsége Hollyvoodlandből. Illetve inkább az időközben elhunyt apjáé, aki az adott időszakban született, és akinek a forgatókönyve David fiókjában várakozott a jóindulatú Netflixre. A hollywoodi stúdiófőnökök vállalkozói víziók általi elragadtatás, előkelő társasági partik és viták luxusvillák pazar termeiben, és egy olyan tehetséges forgatókönyvíró intim portréja, aki különcsége és a szövetséges szakemberek köreiben való állandó jelenléte ellenére inkább kívülálló alkoholista. Mindez csodálatosnak és vonzónak hangozhat (és filmalkotás szempontjából hihetetlenül hitelesen van kivitelezve), de az eredmény mégis problémás. Fincher a film világát olyan politikával szövi át, ami a nézőt nem érdekli egy adott korszak adott környezetében, ugrál az időben és a szereplők között, akikről keveset vagy semmit sem mond, és éppen csak sikerül a főszereplő motivációira koncentrálnia a homályos elbeszélésben, amiről állítólag az egész szól. Egyes részei mesésen szórakoztatóak (stúdiólátogatás és szabadtéri díszlet), vagy fejlett kreatív ügyességet idéznek fel, máshol viszont untatnak haszontalanságokkal és üres párbeszédekkel. William Hearst (Charles Dance) karaktere, aki Mank ihletője volt az Aranypolgár című film megírásához, itt elhanyagolva van, és nem teremt elgondolkodtató párhuzamot Welles és Fincher filmje között. Hangulattal, pózzal és véleménnyel túlzsúfolva, művészileg nyilvánvalóan ambiciózus mű bizonyára tetszeni fog néhány akadémikusnak, történésznek, mozirajongónak és politológusnak, de én ezeken a vizeken inkább a narratívan sikamlósabb és sztori szempontjából izgalmasabb darabokat preferálom - legyen az cinikusan intellektuális (Altman A játékos című filmje) vagy egyszerűen csak szívből jövő (Burton Ed Wood filmje). A színészek közül Arliss Howard áll a legközelebb az Oscar-díjhoz L.B.Mayer zseniális alakításáért. Séta az MGM-stúdiókban az érzelmes monológjával az év egyik legjobb filmjelenete. "This is the 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."
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David Fincher is one of the greatest directorial aces and has long since established a position where we know that anything he makes will be at least interesting, and Mank is no exception. However, I suffered quite a bit as a viewer with it. This trip to 1940s Hollywood is no doubt a good film, and the depiction of the era, the politicking of the studios, and the life of a screenwriter who, though he drank a lot, could be all the more honest, is definitely worth watching, even if I was bored from the halfway point on. All those objective and technical qualities I can understand and subscribe to, Fincher knows what he's doing and he does it damn well. It's just that this time he didn't hit the mark for me in theme or indeed form. I simply didn't enjoy watching his new film. And he didn't want to make it any easier. Great atmosphere, a perfect Gary Oldman, great sets and music, but behind all that is the all-too-ordinary story of an all-too-ordinary man. I expect something more progressive from Fincher. Maybe, since he was directing his late father's script, he wanted to keep himself a little bit in check. I could understand that, but I'm not sure it was worth it.
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A sea of name dropping, perfectly executed visuals, but emotionally speaking, Mank only barely whispered to me here and there, rather than speaking to me coherently. It is the completion of a homework assignment for me and David Fincher, saved from downfall primarily by its unintentional thematic relevance.
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A formally precise and linguistically exquisite picture about the writing of the screenplay for Citizen Kane. Unfortunately, apart from context of that period, it offers nothing new. Filming according to his father’s screenplay, Fincher nurtured all aspects of this heart-felt project and the way he presents the topic in the style of a forties movie is very appropriate. You can’t tell the difference. The actors are great down to the last one. The music is perfect: Reznor and Russ are brutally moderate, obediently serving the story. But it was strange to listen to Trent’s typical piano playing in a movie that clearly must have been filmed eighty years ago...
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Mank is a decent piece in the classic puzzle game of pre-war Hollywood, W.R. Hearst, Marion Davies, and RKO 281. Those who only watch this as a bonus to Citizen Kane will be missing out. I can only recommend: study more, much more.
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In the first minutes, if not seconds, I was amazed by how Mank looks - truly like it was filmed 80 years ago, a beautifully restored film that made it to Netflix this year (and, sadly, not to movie theatres where it REALLY deserves to be). The best part is that the amazement didn't leave me by the end of the film, and it is also great in terms of the script, the actors (Gary Oldman is even better than you think), actresses (the magical Amanda Seyfried and Lily Collins) and music (untypical but excellent Reznor and Ross). If you don't want to watch Citizen Kane before Mank, then after Mank you will. And then you'll probably watch Mank again.
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It’s very inconsistent, I was a bit disappointed immediately after the screening, then I was writing a more extensive review, during which the film matured in me and, probably too naively, I started looking for cinephile themes and similarities or variations of Citizen Kane, only for Mank to vanish from my mind suspiciously fast a day later. I don’t mind the mythologisation of Orson Wells’s sparse participation in the screenwriting process of Citizen Kane, because I don’t take historical accuracy very much into account when evaluating a film, but it still affected my original idea regarding the coherence of the narration – though I think Fincher develops well the titular character, who in many aspects is a contrast of Charles Foster Kane (which is actually highlighted several times by the style and staging of some scenes), and provides a focused image of the time, but the individual segments feel a little haphazardly put together and don’t move the story forward much. The secondary characters are very numerous and at times it’s not clear what the author wants to say with this or that memory. Also, unlike his other films, Fincher doesn’t deliver any surprises, nor does he pull the viewer into a whirl of psychological motifs. Mank is a nostalgic retro painting that should hang at an art gallery attended only by very specific fans of period films, but it’s hanging between other new releases on Netflix, the brush strokes are clearly contemporaneous and evoke the style of the time only because they are in black and white. I respect Mank as something that brings diversity and a magical recreation of its time that irradiates love for filmmaking, and I must also admit that it didn’t bore me even for a second. I will gladly go back to it, but next time without expecting to find SOMETHING at any cost in this anticipated tribute to a great film and a difficult era (and I really tried and lied myself that that SOMETHING is there), and maybe I will be able to appreciate it from a different perspective. For the time being, though, I have to say that a couple of days ago I wouldn’t have believed that David Fincher could feel so impersonal (though still strong and beautiful to look at).
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This year, David Fincher gave me an early Christmas present in the form of a 100% movie-lover experience, thanks to which I was lost for two hours in the Hollywood machinery and political jungle of the end of the 1930s and start of the 1940s. Jack Fincher's screenplay flows harmoniously like a poem and there are strong intense speeches from the characters that I haven't heard in a movie for a long time. Cult movie making maybe, but absolutely breathtaking and shot right from the heart!
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Mank certainly doesn't hide its Oscar ambitions and at the same time represents one among a number of films where (academic) form rolls over (audience-friendly) content. The black-and-white visuals, the fading blackouts, the vintage opening credits and the premise of the film take the viewer back to the golden era of Hollywood, a time of big studios, bright stars and screenwriting teams and solitaires. David Fincher's Mank is a skillfully made biopic, but for most of its running time it lacks any dramatic or deeper scene – it wasn't until near the end, when Mank's pours out of his heart while watching Citizen Kane, that I felt stronger emotions. A promising film in terms of acting and themes, but one that limps along on a lackluster execution.
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"WhY dOEsN’t FiNCher MaKe aNoTHeR Se7en?!?§" the movie. A work hardly applicable in a non-American environment (god, just the idea that it has Czech dubbing or subtitles in the usual Netflix quality), for which one can't be mad at Jarmila Střížkova here for absolutely not knowing where its head is at. In our confines, then, it's mainly a problem that among the mainstream cashless-market critics, there is no one who has the will to interpret and articulate the film to the local viewer, used to boredly clicking through the endless Netflix offerings in his sweatpants on the couch to see if there is anything else capable of engaging him. We all laughed at the Spáčilová until we discovered that there never was a Spáčilová, it was always just us. The absence of Mank from theaters is one of the most unfortunate things to happen this year.
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David Fincher succeeded in making a movie with a great retro vibe, amazing visuals, a soundtrack that takes you back to the 30s/40s, and a decent cast. But in the process of creating all that period perfection, everyone seemed to have slightly forgotten about the story. It turned out to be quite boring given the length of the movie. The film wasn't uninteresting, but it dragged.
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After 6 long years since the phenomenal Gone Girl, David Fincher returns to the feature-length format with the autobiographical Mank, based on a screenplay by his father. Honestly, I was slightly dismayed the moment Netflix announced this project, as it seemed at first blush like a waste of my all-time favorite filmmaker's talents. For Fincher, this is undoubtedly a rather personal project and dream, which unfortunately left a very impersonal impression and an at times reprehensibly boring portrait of one eccentric screenwriter. The biggest problem arises when you want to assess Mank (and I certainly do) in the context of Fincher's entire oeuvre. I should preface this by saying that I approached this film with as open a mind as possible before seeing it and tried as much as possible to suppress my exaggerated expectations and be as soberly objective as possible. I'll start with the best that Mank has to offer – the period styling and precise image work is almost orgiastic in some passages, and the conversational duel at the birthday party of Louis B. Mayer is Fincher fantastic. Gary Oldman is also excellent in the main role, and Fincher has extracted the maximum acting out of Amanda Seyfried. The list of positives ends there, because the final impression of Mank most resembles a perfectly stripped-down stylistic exercise. In fact, Gary Oldman's striking performance and all the visual pageantry only obscure the narrative emptiness of the entire film, steering this Fincher's dream project into some kind of arthouse waters for a "chosen and spiritually superior audience" who will gush over the period atmosphere of classic Hollywood and glorify the ubiquitous academic boredom. Yes, this is indeed a film by the same filmmaker responsible for Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, and Gone Girl. If Fincher continues in a similar vein in the years to come, then good help us all. And the saddest part is that Fincher would have done 100x better to produce another series of Mindhunter instead of the whole famed Man. The first project from David Fincher where we didn't encounter my favorite filmmaker. [55%]
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Fincher is a genius. Although I consider Citizen Kane to be a truly extraordinary and timeless work, I really did not think of myself as the target audience for a movie about 1930s Hollywood, I thought the whole thing would just go right over my head. Instead, I was served a movie which was simply amazing, I could not find any fault with it. In terms of directing, it goes beyond anything made in the last couple of years. I'm no film snob or an art film lover, quite the contrary, I'm into mainstream movies, but Mank, just like the recent Roma, is an absolute treat.
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