David Fincher turns his camera on old Hollywood itself in Mank, a black-and-white portrait of the writer behind one of American cinema's most celebrated screenplays.
What is Mank about?
Set across 1930s Hollywood, the film follows screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the script that would become Citizen Kane, working under pressure from Orson Welles while wrestling with studio politics, old grudges and his own reputation as a brilliant but self-destructive writer. Gary Oldman plays Mankiewicz, with Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, Lily Collins, Arliss Howard, Tom Pelphrey, Sam Troughton and Ferdinand Kingsley filling out the studio-era world around him.
About the cast
Gary Oldman leads the film as Mankiewicz, with Amanda Seyfried appearing as actress Marion Davies and Charles Dance, Lily Collins, Arliss Howard, Tom Pelphrey, Sam Troughton and Ferdinand Kingsley rounding out a cast built to recreate the studio system of the era. Charles Dance appears as a powerful studio figure whose presence looms over much of the writer's dilemma, adding tension to scenes built almost entirely on dialogue.
Context & significance
Directed by David Fincher from a script written years earlier by his late father, Jack Fincher, Mank is a United States production shot in stark black and white to echo the visual style of the era it depicts. Its focus stays on the writer's room and the studio power struggles behind the scenes rather than on the making of Citizen Kane itself. The result plays closer to a chamber drama about ambition and compromise inside a studio system than to a making-of story, with long dialogue-driven scenes carrying most of the film's weight.
Watching Mank on Ktime
Mank is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, giving Farsi-speaking audiences full access to a dense, dialogue-driven drama about Hollywood's golden age. The film's page is free to browse; watching requires only a K-Time account.