Review | Netflix movie review: Mank – David Fincher makes his own Citizen Kane with splendid turns from Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried

Shot in black and white and featuring some titanic Hollywood personalities, Fincher’s film, scripted by his late father, is both deeply personal and revelatory

Oldman excels as screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, wrestling with the script of Citizen Kane, and Seyfried, as actress Marion Davies, has never been better

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Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz in a still from Mank, directed by David Fincher and co-starring Amanda Seyfried. The film debuts on Netflix on December 4.

Published: 1:00am, 7 Nov 2020Updated: 2:03pm, 10 Nov 2020

4.5/5 stars

David Fincher’s first film since 2014’s Gone Girl is one of his most personal – and most beautiful. Mank is a biopic of Hollywood screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, written by Fincher’s own father. Jack Fincher, who penned the script in the 1990s, died in 2003, before his son could direct it. If he’d lived to see the finished article, he would be brimming with pride.

Set in the 1930s, Mank deals with the screenwriter’s efforts to script Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, his 1941 feature debut that skewered media mogul William Randolph Hearst. Gary Oldman, in a performance every bit as immersive as his Oscar-winning Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour , plays Mank, a raging alcoholic who already had dozens of screen credits to his name.

Welles and Hearst appear, played by Tom Burke and Charles Dance respectively, but they are bit players in Mank’s story. More important are the women in his life – wife Sara (Tuppence Middleton), secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Collins) and bombshell actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried, who truly looks like she belongs in 1930s Hollywood here).

With Mank convalescing in bed after a car accident, the script for Citizen Kane comes together, its embittered writer increasingly left battered by his addiction to the bottle. Wonderfully scripted by Fincher Snr, one particularly cringeworthy confrontation with Hearst at a dinner party leaves a sour taste, with Mank left in no uncertain terms about where he stands in the pecking order.