Short Commentary on "Mank" Exceeds the number of characters in the long commentary

Johnathan 2022-03-23 09:02:25

The photography is very retro, with the slow push and pull of the lens, and the reduced exposure that mimics the old movies and only a white light bulb is left. At the end of the table confrontation, Manke confronted the upper-class people alone. The rich people left the camera too much and too deliberately. It would be better if only Manke was alone and others kept passing by behind him.

After watching a few David Fincher movies, I still don't quite understand the point of the audience who like him, and feel that his films are too scattered. The editing of this film is too messy, and often cuts from different perspectives together. For example, taking a panoramic view from the front and one person sitting on the sofa, then taking a middle background shot from the right side, one person talking with his back to the camera, and one person talking sideways, and then taking a close-up shot from the left side, the sideways person talking with a wine glass. It's very straightforward in many places.

For two hours, Mank's character was not created, which again reflects the amazingness of "Citizen Kane". The only thing that surprised me was that the German nanny said that Manke saved more than 100 people in their village from fleeing to the United States. But it was an ordinary over-the-shoulder shot, and the subsequent stenographer was surprised by the change, and decided to respect Manke's will and hand him a wine glass, which was also very bland. The change of the stenographer in this scene reflects Manke's character highlights, as if he just borrowed a historical event from a historical figure. What we are moved is only the historical event, not the character shot by the director.

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Extended Reading
  • Stephon 2022-04-20 09:01:59

    If the restoration of "The Other Side of the Wind" is a victory for "Netflix takes over the traditional author theory", then "Mank" means that the streaming media platform can also reproduce a "hyperreal" film through lens language and digital technology. Effect. It is full of exquisite archaism and the "Hollywood Modernism" structure that self-deprecates as "requiring the help of a roadmap", and it forms some kind of isomorphism and reference to some real events. Of note is a series of montages in the middle of the film, the eve of the election, that crystallize the timing of Citizen Kane in classical avant-garde. Mankiewicz is like a character in Orson's film, but as the "Not So Finch" structure of the film suggests, there is still a hidden author behind Mank, just as Mank must bear Orson's absence of subjectivity, when His first appearance in front of Mank and the audience is more dramatic than his previous stand-ins behind the telephone, like God in the Old Testament, and Fincher, in this "father's text", achieves the ultimate the murder of his father, or quite the opposite, by his murder.

  • Nico 2022-04-23 07:03:00

    The sense of "oldness" is full, and the sincerity is questionable.

Mank quotes

  • Herman Mankiewicz: That, my friend, is the magic of the movies.

  • Herman Mankiewicz: Irving, you are the shrewdest executive in this town. Why are you acting like some dumb ward heeler? You don't need my donation. You don't need anybody's. You have everything it takes right here.

    Irving Thalberg: Meaning?

    Herman Mankiewicz: [sighs] Meaning you can make the world swear King Kong is ten stories tall and Mary Pickford a virgin at 40. Yet you can't convince starving voters that a turncoat socialist is a menace to everything Californians hold dear? You're barely trying.