Mank

Este ano, Fincher, tal como Nolan, caiu numa variação exagerada do seu fétiche fora dos parâmetros do filme para o público tradicional. Mank é a sua Grande retro-Beleza de Hollywoodland. Ou melhor, é do seu pai, já falecido, que nasceu durante o período em questão e cujo argumento estava à espera de Netflix indulgente na gaveta de David. O fascínio pelo visionarismo empresário dos chefes de estúdios de Hollywood, as festas e debates da alta sociedade nos salões ostentosos das mansões de luxo, e um retrato íntimo dum argumentista talentoso que, apesar da sua excentricidade e da sua constante presença nos círculos dos profissionais aliados, era um outsider alcoólico. Tudo isso pode parecer maravilhoso e atraente (e também é incrivelmente autenticamente executado cinematicamente), mas o resultado permanece problemático. Fincher interliga o mundo do filme com a política do lugar e da época que não interessa ao espetador, saltando no tempo e entre personagens sobre os quais diz pouco ou nada, e numa narrativa dispersa pouco se concentra nas motivações do personagem principal, sobre o qual tudo é suposto ser. Em algumas partes é fabulosamente divertido (a visita aos estúdios e exteriores cinematográficos) ou evoca uma inteligência criativa desenvolvida, em outras aborrece com diálogos inúteis e vazios. A personagem de William Hearst (Charles Dance), que deveria ser a inspiração para Mank escrever O Mundo a Seus Pés, é branda aqui e não cria nenhum paralelismo de ideias entre o filme de Welles e o de Fincher. Uma obra de arte claramente ambiciosa, sobrecarregada de humores, posturas e opiniões, irá certamente agradar a alguns académicos, historiadores, cinéfilos e cientistas políticos numa só pessoa, mas, neste campo, eu prefiro as peças mais engenhosas e narrativamente estimulantes — quer cinicamente intelectuais (O Jogador de Altman) ou simplesmente cordiais (Ed Wood de Burton). Dos atores, Arliss Howard mais se aproxima dum Óscar pela sua magnífica interpretação de L.B. Mayer. Aquele passeio pela MGM com o seu monólogo emocional é uma das melhores cenas de cinema do ano. (12/12/2020)

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. (07/12/2020)

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. (23/04/2021)

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... (05/12/2020)

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. (10/12/2020)

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. (04/12/2020)

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). (05/12/2020)

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! (27/12/2020)

Mank atrai o público, principalmente desvendando o emaranhado de influências que levaram o personagem principal, um argumentista alcoólico, a escrever o famoso Cidadão Kane. No entanto, a escrita desse argumento desempenha apenas um segundo, ou melhor, um terceiro papel no filme Mank, e a sua filmagem não acontece de todo; o grande Tom Burke está no ecrã durante cerca de três minutos no total no papel de Orson Welles, e Mank também não segue os factos históricos - por exemplo, apresenta o envolvimento de Welles na criação do argumento, de acordo com mitos há muito negados. De facto, Mank preocupa-se mais com o funcionamento geral de Hollywood na década de 1930 e durante a Depressão, e depois fala-nos do estado de espírito político da época e sobre o assunto que rodeou as eleições de governador de 1934 na Califórnia, em medida aproximadamente igual, o que, compreensivelmente, não funciona tanto como uma atração para o público. Mas o problema não é esse. O problema é que nada disto é tratado de uma forma muito envolvente. Embora possa compreender completamente o desejo de Fincher de fazer um filme baseado no argumento do seu pai há muito adiado, infelizmente é um argumento cheio de personagens pouco interessantes, mal definidas e escritas, que muitas vezes pronunciam linhas espirituosas e medidas com precisão, mas de que serve isso quando não há ninguém no ecrã com quem construir qualquer tipo de relação. A segunda metade, além disso, perde fundamentalmente energia e, para além de uma cena de bebedeira num jantar de máscaras, não contém sequer nada de muito notável. Ed Wood de Tim Burton, por exemplo, foi feito com uma intenção semelhante e resultou muito melhor. Mank também se relaciona com Cidadão Kane na sua tentativa de uma retro-forma audiovisual, que é impressionante, mas não consistente (afinal, foi filmada em ecrã panorâmico digital), na complicada estrutura narrativa cheia de flashbacks (que por vezes são desviados de forma estranha) e numa série de alusões diferentes (citações visuais, referências ao trenó e ao botão, por exemplo). Por isso, é definitivamente obrigatório ver Cidadão Kane primeiro. Orientar-se nas figuras-chave da sociedade de Hollywood da altura não é, felizmente, tão necessário, mas é definitivamente uma vantagem. (13/12/2020)

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. (18/04/2021)

"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. (14/12/2020)

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. (24/06/2021)

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%] (07/12/2020)

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. (16/08/2022)