The 50 best films of 2020 in the US: No 8 – Mank
David Fincher's first film for Netflix was a visually breathtaking look at boozehound screenwriter Herman J Mankiewicz
Even if Citizen Kane's lustre has dulled a little (it's no longer top of the Sight & Sound critics poll, after decades of supremacy), it is still the optimal symbol of what Hollywood can achieve when it puts its mind to it. Hence the ongoing battles over who did what and when. This beautifully sculpted act of ancestor worship plants its flag firmly in the writer's camp, and casts Orson Welles as little more than a credit-grabbing circus-master - when he actually shows up, which is seldom.
It's an interpretation, of course, and one that is very much disputed; and it has been pointed out that Mank director David Fincher has bit of a personal axe to grind in that his late father Jack, who wrote this script, had his own story of writerly frustration with Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator.
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