The Curious Cult of Mank
When a movie develops a cult following it’s generally because it’s very good but was misunderstood and under-appreciated during its theatrical release or because it is unspeakably awful in a way that’s fun to watch and talk about.
In that respect Mank is a curious cult film in that it would be damn near impossible to say that it was misunderstood and under-appreciated during its initial release because it was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including nominations in major categories like Best Picture, Best Director (David FIncher), Best Actor (Gary Oldman) and Best Supporting Actress (Amanda Seyfried), although its only wins were for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design.
It would similarly be difficult, if not impossible, to argue that the reason Mank has developed a cult is because it’s so bad it’s good although Mank has its share of laughable elements.
You could certainly argue that Mank has more than its share of ridiculous elements, beginning with the bizarre casting of sixty-something human chameleon Gary Oldman as a man who was forty-five when Citizen Kane was released and even younger during the film’s many flashbacks.
The presence of the thirty-five year old Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies, a movie star born the same year as Mank, only highlights the utter ridiculousness of casting a sixty-one year old actor who very much looks his age as a man in his mid-forties or younger.
Then there’s the name: Mank. It sounds more like the title of a monster movie from the 1950s than a prestige picture from 2020.
It’s hard to take a movie called Mank seriously even when it hollers its importance and seriousness from the mountaintops. It’s even harder to take it seriously when it engages in such shameless hagiography, not just depicting its subject as the unsung genius behind Citizen Kane but as pretty much the smartest, most talented, witty and moral man in the history of the universe.
Then there’s the weirdness endemic in David Fincher, one of one of our flashiest and most revered directors, making an old-time manifesto about how flashy, revered, big-shot directors are credit-hogging, narcissistic phonies while screenwriters like the director’s dad Jack, who not so coincidentally wrote Mank, are the unheralded geniuses of cinema.
I enjoyed Mank for the most part but I also found it to be a silly vanity project puffed full of unearned self-importance. I chuckled quite a bit during Mank. I found mysel laughing at the movie as well as with it.
I’m so weirdly obsessed with Mank and its ridiculous title (which can’t help but remind me of Mant, the film within-a-film in Joe Dante’s wonderful Matinee, a much more charming and less self-absorbed exploration of the film business) that I was moved to make October Crank N’ Mank Month here at the Happy Place.
Rather than taking the piss out of Mank by pairing it with an unabashed exercise in B-movie exploitation I’m honoring its essential pulpiness by mashing it together with a movie that’s also vulgar and flashy, albeit in a considerably less highbrow fashion.
I’m proud to call myself a member of the semi-ironic Mank cult. Heck, I’ve even I’ve even picked out a sweet Mank-themed tattoo but that, honestly, might be taking things just a little too far.
Pre-order The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s upcoming book about the very best of the very worst and get instant access to all of the original pieces I’m writing for them AS I write them (there are NINE so far, including Shasta McNasty and the first and second seasons of Baywatch Nights) AND, as a bonus, monthly write-ups of the first season Baywatch Nights you can’t get anywhere else (other than my Patreon feed) at https://the-joy-of-trash.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
and of course you can buy The Weird Accordion to Al here: https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or from Amazon here
AND of course you can also pledge to this site and help keep the lights on at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace