Mank

A zesty portrait of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he toiled on "Citizen Kane," "Mank" may be a pretty overt piece of Oscar bait. But if so, it's a damned good one.

Hollywood loves movies about itself, and not coincidentally they are often some of the best and juiciest it makes. Take for example "Mank," a zesty portrait of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz with Gary Oldman in the title role.

It's a helluva picture, looking into his process of writing "Citizen Kane," regarded by many (thought not me) as the greatest film ever made. Mankiewicz was a journeyman, a newspaper critic lured to Hollywood by dollar signs and stars, known for his caustic wit -- both in person and in his writing -- and legendary drinking. He often worked as a ghost writer or script doctor, fixing up other people's screenplays or supplying the dialogue, usually without a credit.

As time went on his reputation was eclipsed by his kid brother, Joseph L., who as a writer, director and producer would helm some of the most distinguished movies of the mid-century: "All About Eve," "Guys and Dolls," "A Letter to Three Wives," "Julius Caesar," "The Quiet American," etc.

I've often found that movies built around a singular lead performance tend to be good-not-great films. (See "Capote," "Ray," etc.) So much of the energy is centered on making the star shine that the supporting characters fade into the background and the story becomes tertiary.

Not "Mank," a great story that just happens to have a great performance at its center.

Oldman's become such a screen chameleon as he gets older. After winning an Oscar for playing Winston Churchill I bet he'll have a strong shot at a repeat for Mank. With floppy hair, owly glasses and a bloated neck that hangs under his chin like a frog's croaker -- prosthetic? if so masterfully done -- he's barely recognizable from his other iconic roles.

The voice work is especially keen. He gives Mank a sort of high, croaky pitch, sounding like a man who's always poking fun at something or someone, usually with a drink in his hand. He moves like an old man, though in the period the movie covers -- 1934 to 1940 -- Mank is still in his 30s to early 40s.

If you don't know the "Kane" legend, well there's a lot there, which I'll barely touch on. Short version is stage/radio wunderkind Orson Welles was lured to Hollywood with promises of creative freedom and a contract saying he is the author of his films -- figuratively and literally. It was not unusual in those days (or even these) for a writer to be paid well for work in exchange for not receiving credit.

Mank wrote the script, instantly recognized it as the best thing he's ever done and demanded credit, and received it... along with an Oscar, the only one he, Welles or "Kane" would win.

Most of the story takes place inside a cabin in the dusty California desert where Mank has been put up by Welles (Tom Burke) and their mutual friend, John Houseman (Sam Troughton). Mank is laid up with a badly broken leg and is awarded a carefully apportioned case of booze, as well as a nurse and a secretary, Rita (Lily Collins). The idea is to keep him sober and working during the day, and indulge himself, but too much, in the evening.

Flashbacks take us back to the period when Mank was at the top of his game at MGM in the '30s, making $2,500 a week (nearly 50 grand in today's dollars) at the height of the Depression to churn out amusing comedies and fix bad scripts. Though he insults just about everyone around him, Mank is kept around as a sort of court jester for studio chief Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) and his unofficial boss, newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), of whom Charles Foster Kane was a barely-veiled portrait.

Kane and Mayer tried their darndest to keep "Citizen Kane" from being made or distributed, and Mank was given the "you'll never work in this town again" speech by multiple along the way.

I know this doesn't sound like very interesting stuff, but there's never a dull moment in "Mank." We investigate how he (d)evolved from a happy raconteur to a sharp-knived takedown artist of the rich and powerful. Without giving too much away, it involves muckraker Upton Sinclair, who clashed with Hearst.

Movies like this tend to be very men-centric, so I was pleased by a passel of strong female characters, starting with Collins' Rita. She starts out subservient to Mank but soon establishes her own identity and lines of power.

Then there's his wife, Sara (Tuppence Middleton), who's kept on the sidelines most of the time but shows up for key sequences. She loves Mank but sees right through his contrivances and self-delusions, putting up with his boozing and "platonic affairs" with women like Rita.

It's a great description of the way Mank relates to women: flirty, confidential, gentlemanly, plying a finesse for emotional intimacy without ever so much as a hint of the physical kind. It's a strange but lovely contradiction that a man with an inexhaustible thirst for vices like drink, slothfulness and gambling was able to treat women as friends and equals.

Perhaps his most notable dalliance of the heart is with Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried, just wonderful), Hearst's wife and an actress of middling talents. She would go on to be the model for Kane's wife in the movie, Sandra, who's depicted as a pathetic caged bird.

Mank is happy to skewer the hell out of Hearst and Mayer -- translated into the movie as the lawyer toady, Mr. Bernstein. But his one concession to consideration is his repeated insistence that the movie wife is not a reflection of the real one.

A few other notable characters flit in and out of the story. There's Tom Pelphrey as Joseph Mankiewicz, just as smart as his brother but without the plus-sized personality; Ferdinand Kingsley as studio honcho Irving Thalberg, who's shown to be utterly mercenary but never a phony; and Jamie McShane as a filmmaking friend whose ambition leads him to some moral compromises.

"Mank" is shot in gorgeous black-and-white by cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, with an equally lovely old-timey musical score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Director David Fincher worked from a script by his own father, Jack Finch -- his first and, sadly, only screen credit as he passed away some years ago. It deliberately mimics the look and feel of films or the era it depicts, right down to typed slug lines of a screenplay setting scenes for us.

The dialogue is spectacular, with many wonderful layered speeches and throwaway jokes -- just the sort of thing Mankiewicz was famous for.

"Mank" may be a pretty overt piece of Oscar bait, but if so it's a damned good one.