Mank

Cinephiles may know the story of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s scriptwriting duties for Orson Welles and the legendary film ‘Citizen Kane’, duties that led film critic Pauline Kael to write a book arguing that Mankiewicz, not Welles, was the real genius behind the movie. Though Kael’s claims were indisputably discredited by Welles scholars, director David Fincher and actor Gary Oldman team up to give ‘Mank’ his due with this gorgeously realised (in dreamy black and white) and brilliantly acted look at the writer’s drink-sodden life. And what a life! His wit made him a regular guest of newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his mistress, actor Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), and it was these encounters that led to Mank’s evisceration of Hearst in his script for ‘Citizen Kane’. Unforgettable!

‘Fincher’s latest is the best movie of the year… Every scene oozes intellect, but stops short of pretension… Oldman is sublime here. His Oscar for playing Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour” was deserved, if predictable… This time he creates a character nearly from scratch. Few people have a frame of reference for how Mankiewicz looked or talked, and so the performance is much more real…’—Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post