David Fincher's biographical drama film, Mank, has just been released on Netflix, and everyone is talking about Gary Oldman's splendid performance.
On the one hand, the movie is earning all the praise for the direction and Jack Fincher's screenplay, but several still wonder what the film is all about and how it affects 1941 release Citizen Kane -- the greatest movie to be ever made.
Mank movie plot:
Mindhunter's David Fincher's Mank movie shows the 1930s Hollywood where we see an alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane. The film features Oldman as Mankiewicz, Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies, Lily Collins as Susan Alexander Kane, Arliss Howard as Louis B. Mayer, and others.
Fincher's Mank movie is sharply written and shows what went behind the making of Citizen Kane movie. While narrating Citizen Kane's making, the film features the Hollywood that we all have heard about but has only seen in old movies like Sunset At Boulevard.
To watch something like Netflix's Mank, one should understand what it takes to write a movie's screenplay and, at the same time, what it goes in a writer's mind where he wishes to play like mordant drawing-room comedy and sometimes flirts with the expressionist's nightmares.
Mank and Citizen Kane:
Orsen Welles's 1941 drama movie Citizen Kane movie was made on the screenplay written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz. The movie is considered by many critics, filmmakers, and even fans to be the greatest movie ever made. The movie was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, where it won an Academy Award for Best Writing by Mankiewicz.
Citizen Kane movie is praised for Gregg Toland's cinematography, Robert Wise's editing, Bernard Herrmann's music, and the entire narrative structure it represents.
Citizen Kane movie follows the life of Charles Foster Kane, a composed character based upon a couple of American tycoons who shifted the media industry.
"This was a really wonderful sandbox," Fincher said at a recent online screening of Mank. "You had a great character at the center of it who can expound very delightfully on everything that he encounters. And he was a great avatar to take a look at Hollywood in its heyday."
