Mank Review

Jack Fincher wrote this screenplay before his death in 2003; his son David had wanted to shoot it after The Game in 1997, and Netflix finally shot it in late 2019, in black and white on digital cameras. Gary Oldman plays Herman J. Mankiewicz in 1940, recovering from a car crash in Victorville and dictating Citizen Kane against a deadline, while flashbacks return him to MGM, to Hearst's San Simeon and to the studio's campaign against Upton Sinclair in the 1934 governor's race.

The craft is immaculate. Erik Messerschmidt's photography, day-for-night exteriors included, borrows from Gregg Toland's work on Kane, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross scored it for period instruments. Amanda Seyfried's Marion Davies, sharp and unexpectedly moving, is the best thing in it; Oldman is good company, if nearly two decades older than the man he plays, and Charles Dance's Hearst is ice at the head of the table.

What it lacks is warmth, and a fair argument. The script leans on Pauline Kael's claim that Welles barely wrote Kane, a thesis scholars have long disputed, and Tom Burke's Welles is kept to the margins. It led the Oscars with ten nominations and won two, for cinematography and production design.