Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
1930s Hollywood is reevaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane.
Mank is a visually sumptuous love letter to Old Hollywood, shot by Erik Messerschmidt in immaculate black-and-white that evokes the era with extraordinary fidelity. Gary Oldman delivers a barnstorming performance as the caustic, self-destructive Mankiewicz, and the supporting cast — Amanda Seyfried especially — is excellent. However, the film's narrative is fractured and deliberately elliptical in ways that frustrate more than illuminate; the Hearst-Kane parallel can feel schematic and the emotional stakes remain oddly muted. Its novelty lies mainly in Fincher's meticulous formal recreation of Golden Age filmmaking grammar rather than a genuinely fresh conceptual angle on the material. The ending is melancholy and fitting but not particularly resonant beyond the biographical facts it recounts.