Summer 1998. A friend and I were driving past the Beverly Wilshire when he started. ‘Look, there’s Sean Penn!’ I turned to see. Slouched on bench behind red sunglasses, wearing white sweat socks and comfy slippers, he was casually fiddling with a baseball bat. But it definitely wasn’t Sean Penn—nor was the curly-haired guy sitting next, for that matter, whom I realised only later was director David Fincher. My friend was obviously more knowledgeable about NBA players than actors, and I was just the opposite, though on one thing he was right—the semi-pyjamaed demigod lounging there, probably waiting for his driver, was the actor from Seven Years in Tibet. At Ale’s command, I snapped a cheap paparazzi photo with our disposable Kodak camera and that was it—one more for the album of our crazy time at UCLA.
A few days after the surreal encounter we were wandering around Downtown as we stumbled upon a film set. Not an unusual sight in LA, except this was clearly bigger than the average we had seen around, so we got closer and approached a guy with enough communication devices on his body to seem a reliable source of information. Between a walkie-talkie buzz and another he was kind enough to reply, even caring to embellish the title with an article—The Fight Club. At that point, I had no idea that such a film was in the works, but when I eventually saw it about a year later, something struck me indelibly—the fragments of practical filmmaking I had hardly glimpsed on the streets against what the art of cinema had made of it.
I must have had an almond stuck in my rectum when I saw it first upon release, especially thinking that apart from some stylistic affectations that I still find unnecessary—the excessive glow against the digital feel of its crystal b/w or the fake cigarette burns, for instance—what had put me off then is just what enthralled me more at this round.
As much as gossip is always more interesting than facts, if Mank deserves any attention, it’s not for having lent an ear to it—perhaps rewriting history a touch too aggressively here and there—but for having dwelt on the adventurous lives that fed material and intentions of one of the most debated masterpieces in American cinema.
Hollywood at its glorious best, according to Fincher’s intriguing rendition, is an unfinished place populated by neurotic individuals who are not proud of what they do, hate their work, the friendships they maintain, and ultimately themselves. But it’s also a stage within another where true selves are vacant but for the echo of their unspoken torments in their virtuosic dialogues. A ruthless producer, an almighty entrepreneur, an arrogant genius, a disillusioned screenwriter and pantomime drunkard, and an only apparently airheaded blonde—Mank is a tragicomic carousel of magnificently cast and interpreted roles, dextrously spun by feverishly inspired pages that, to my partial defense, do require a few iterations to be appreciated in all their depth and clever writing. Never too late to reconsider a film.
