David Fincher's "Mank" was originally seen as a commentary on "Citizen Kane", hoping that this movie about the movie would bring some inspiration, but the result was slightly disappointed. This ambitious film with few flaws in its production and cast isn't meant to tell you how Citizen Kane came to be and how the creators conceived of such a great character and story, but rather Proof: The creator of this "greatest movie of all time" is not the mythical young talent Orson Welles, but the bohemian alcoholic and gambler screenwriter Herman Mankiwi strange.
Of course, who is the original writer of the "Citizen Kane" script has been a koan in Hollywood for many years. The world praised Orson Welles for his genius, but some thought Mank was the real creator. David Fincher's father is such a person. He wrote the script for "Mank", which was made into a movie by his son many years after his death. In fact, it was to justify Mank's name.
Out of such a complex, "Mank" lost its relevance to the modern ordinary audience, and became a razor-sharp work of ashes fans. In particular, Mank portrays flesh and blood in the film, while Orson Welles becomes a famous, grumpy villain and villain. This kind of praise is actually unfair, and it casts doubt on Finch's position.
Of course, "Mank" also seems to use those boring repeated flashbacks (innumerable use of typewriter subtitles), trying to show the ecology of business and politics in Hollywood in the 1930s, alluding to "Citizen Kane" in "Citizen Kane" The motif of power seems to be strongly satirical. But this kind of presentation is actually painless, and finally returns to the old question of "is Citizen Kane the prototype of the newspaper tycoon Hearst", and this question is at best an anecdote, and there is not much value worthy of further investigation .
So "Mank" seems to be a work of feelings that Finch insists on persistently. In fact, it is just a kind of paranoia of the filmmakers, and it is not so relevant to today's audience --- because it can neither make people today feel "Citizen Kane". " to generate viewing interest or a deeper understanding, and its characters and stories are difficult to resonate with today's audiences.
This is reminiscent of Finch's previous "The Social Network", where Mark Zuckerberg is not actually Mark Zuckerberg in reality, but a fictional character imagined by Finch. So is the real Mank really the Mank in Mank?
The answer to this question doesn't really matter, what matters is that the question itself doesn't really matter.
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