I Tried To Watch ‘Mank’ But Holy Fucking Dogshit, I Just Couldn’t Do It
I tried, ok. I really tried.
In my humble opinion, Mank was boring as fuck — in fact, it was just as boring as I suspected it would be. David Fincher + Gary Oldman + original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross… and I still didn’t give a shit. Which is ironic because I have always been a huge admirer of both David Fincher and Citizen Kane. One of the big problems I have with Mank… is that it’s in black-and-white— now hold on, fucko. Please, let me finish…
There are PLENTY of black-and-white movies I love… Eraserhead… 12 Angry Men… Psycho… Freaks… seriously — but this…? This was just a load of fuck. “Maybe I’m out of touch,” says ME, to the black-and-white movie that came out in the year 2020.
I mean, this is Citizen. Fucking. Kane. That’s the movie that EVERY film school douche bag, such as myself, has to endure if they even want to consider themselves a bonerfied film geek on their well-educated journey to going nowhere fast. A film student has to be a real shithead. A first-class bumpkin of the tallest order, and no human being you would ever want to visit in the hospital if they were to not appreciate the perfection that is — Civilian Kane. Resident Kane. Charles Focksucker Kane Esq. The entrepreneurial, money-grubbing tycoon twat stain.
For those of you who’ve never seen Citizen Kane, I’ll sum it up for you… Charles Foster is like the Scrooge McDuck of the early 20th century, if Scrooge McDuck had made his fortune from building a well-intentioned, strongly ethical media machine only with the sole purpose of buttfucking it.
However, If you would also like to hear a tedious analysis, I have one of those too:
Charles Foster Kane is a man who has a way with money, up until he drops the fuck dead in his mansion, that he named after a shitty Razzie-winning musical from the 1980s. You see, when Charles Foster Kane was a small boy, his mother hit the jackpot because she owned Boardwalk with a hotel and somebody landed on it and she won the game. So basically, the dick-raising fortune that CFK’s slumdog millionaire ass inherited through luck and privilege and a trust that his mother sets up with this old codger named Thatcher, who’s also a banker, is a great idea for an ungrateful little shit to gain full control of when he’s 25 years-old. Once he’s of that age, he thinks it would be fun to own a newspaper. Eventually, the 2/3rd narrative structure clips his ass and he loses almost all of his money during the Great Depression.
When it’s all over and he doesn’t have much fortune anymore, he realizes that without it, people don’t really give a shit about you nor do they care much for your existence — until you drop the fuck dead… then for some reason — because you were once a rich-fuck media tycoon and the Elon Musk of Metropolis(???) — They think that the final word you muttered under your last tepid breath actually meant something but since people’s lives are so aimless and empty to begin with… they’ll actually spend a film’s entire runtime trying to justify said final word’s existence because old-dead-fuck-and-his-bulbous-snowglobe. And they still never find out what the fuck that last word means. Because collectively, the human race is both grossly incompetent and conveniently incapable of noticing attention to detail.
But I digress…
Deep down, Citizen Kane is just a simple story about a troubled country boy who’s in love with his sled.
So, yeah. I actually do have a soft spot for Commander-In-Kane and I don’t feel compelled to admit that just because a bunch of other film nerds believe that they have to. Fuck ‘Em. I think it’s a great film on it’s own, and one worthy of the acclaim that it has sustained.
And so now there’s Mank…
And it just feels like Mank’s reason for existing is — David Fincher owes someone a favor. Who knows. Who cares.
Mank is honestly the first David Fincher movie I’ve seen, where it feels like Fincher is just going through the motions. And I would bet money on it — money that I don’t even have — that it’s because he decided to film Mank in black-and-white.
Just the thought of David Fincher making a black-and-white film about old Hollywood puts me to fucking sleep… because I know what Fincher is capable of, as a director. But hey, even when it feels like Fincher is phoning it in, he’s still technically better than 98% of directors who AREN’T phoning it in.
Also, Black-and-white is a creative choice that does not service a biopic such as this one.
It’s not like Ed Wood, where the decision of black-and-white hardly feels like a stylistic choice. Making Ed Wood in black-and-white felt necessary. It established the world it was portraying and the no-budget spirit of the Z-films from that era — Plus, Tim Burton has always had a way with black-and-white. He’s comfortable with it, and therefore, so is the audience.
And I’m sorry — but no, I’m not fucking sorry — Mank doesn’t feel natural as a black-and-white film.
Again, in Ed Wood — Johnny Depp is insanely charismatic and likable as Edward D Wood Jr. Even people who don’t like black-and-white movies could make a rare exception for it, thanks to Depp’s hypnotic portrayal of this ONE real-life character. Gary Oldman is NOT Johnny Depp in that sense. I gathered that Herman Mankiewicz has two character traits: he’s charming and he’s a drunk. But he’s not even an interesting drunk. He’s just a drunk because… all screenwriters are drunks, essentially??
Not since 2011’s The Artist, has there been such an Oscar contender — where I genuinely don’t believe anyone who says they enjoy it. I think everyone’s just saying that to be nice. And because they love the rest of David Fincher’s exceptional filmography. I got about 47 minutes into Mank before tapping out, “Fuck this. Life is already long enough as it is.”
But don’t worry. I didn't punish Mank too hard. I allowed the rest of the movie to play on my TV in the background while I cleaned my bedroom, clipped my toe nails, clipped my cat’s toe nails, and decided which bidet attachment from Amazon I was going to purchase for my toilet.
Mank is a film that’s most enjoyable when you don’t have to pretend to be invested.
