MANK
(2020)
In summer of 1939, RKO gave 23-year-old
Orson Welles carte blanche to star and direct his first movie. For a script,
the young radio and Broadway star, after failed attempts to adapt “Heart of
Darkness,” turned to Hollywood veteran Herman Mankiewicz, supreme wit, hopeless
alcoholic and, like Welles, a liberal in an industry run by conservatives.
The result, needless to say, is one of
the finest screenplays ever penned, turned by Welles into Hollywood’s greatest
motion picture, “Citizen Kane.”
David Fincher, best known for “The Social
Network” and “Seven,” turns this storied and controversial conception of a
masterpiece into an unwieldy, over-heated, stagy picture filled with
caricatures rather than people and well-worn anecdotes rather than plot.
This high-priced vanity project, from a
script written years ago by the director’s late father, Jack Fincher, offers
little of interest to anyone who isn’t schooled in 1930s Hollywood, doesn’t know
who William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies were or cannot appreciate the
silvery beauty of black and white cinema.
Objectively, it’s not a very successful
film, but watching it subjectively, I was thoroughly entertained; it manages to
both sentimentalize the era and offer a cynical insider’s view of the studio
system through the writer’s eyes.
Shining brightly amid the cacophony of
this production is British actor Gary Oldman, who plays Mankiewicz, or Mank as
everyone calls him, as a wonderfully entertaining character, a world-class
raconteur even as he’s bedridden (after a car accident) and absconded at a
remove Victorville ranch while writing the script.
As we see in the constant flashbacks,
Mankiewicz is tapping into his close friendship with Davies and his knowledge
of Hearst’s public and private life to create Charles Foster Kane.
Oldman, whose career has recent resurged
with performances as master spy George Smiley in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”
and, winning the Oscar, as Churchill in “Darkest Hour,” plays him as a more
mature Joe Orton (the radical playwright he played in “Prick Up Your Ears” in
1987), constantly punching holes in egotistical executives, getting away with
openly insulting them because he’s a valuable writer.
The real antagonist of the film,
ironically, isn’t newspaper publisher Hearst (a quietly intimidating Charles
Dance) but his good friend and frequent visitor to Sam Simeon, Louis B. Mayer
(Arliss Howard, unrecognizable). The MGM mogul is portrayed as a thoroughly
unpleasant man who cares about nothing but maintaining his power to make money.
Maybe he was—I’ve never read a story
about Mayer that portrayed him in a positive light—but, typical of most of the
characters in the film, he comes off as a cartoon version of the man. Even
though most viewers have no knowledge of these people, the actors seem to be
doing imitations as the script offers little more than quips.
Amanda Seyfried as actress Davies has some
nice moments, especially when she meets with Mank after she has read the
script, a portrayal that has Hollywood buzzing. Even Mank’s more sensible
younger brother Joseph (who went on to director “All About Eve” and many other
acclaimed films) is shocked that Davies counterpart in the script, opera singer
Susan Alexander, is painted as a shrill and talentless burden to Kane.
Though I’ve read extensively about
“Citizen Kane,” I did not realize, before seeing “Mank,” that Mankiewicz had
spent so much time with Davies and Hearst and the closeness of his friendship
with Davies. But I’m also assuming that the script is hewing close to the
truth, including a hart-to-believe scene at Sam Simeon in which a drunken
Mankiewicz unmercifully tears into Hearst at a large dinner party.
For most of the picture, Welles (Tom
Burke) is but a voice on the phone, berating producer John Houseman (Sam
Troughton) or questioning Mank on his progress on the script. But when he
finally arrives in Victorville—after Mankiewicz has completed the script he
calls “American”—he comes off as a spoiled child, demanding that the
screenwriter stick to the original contract and not ask for screen credit.
Welles lost that fight and they received co-writing credit for the film. The
script earned the acclaimed film its only Oscar.
For Mankiewicz, this script was the pinnacle
of career that was mostly spent as a writer of comedies and rewrite man for various
studios from 1926 until his death, of a heart attack, in 1953 at the age of 56.
One of the film’s biggest missteps is the
subplot chronicling journalist and socialist Upton Sinclair’s run for
California governor in 1934, which confirms Mank’s hatred for Mayer and Hearst
as they plot to destroy his candidacy. We’re meant to see the pure evil of
these power brokers, but truthfully Sinclair’s well-meaning candidacy was
doomed from the start and the political maneuverings involved seems pretty tame
by 2020 standards.
Another aspect of this film that will be
appreciated by film aficionados is the theory that Mankiewicz was the sole
author of the acclaimed script—most famously argued by critic Pauline Kael in
the 1970s—without much input from Welles. Because of “Kane’s” importance, it
remains a contentious dispute.
The film also serves as a reminder of why
so many films from that era stand up 80 years later: in an early scene,
Mankiewicz walks into an MGM writers’ room and introduces Charles Lederer
(coincidentally Davies’ nephew) to Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, George S.
Kaufman and Sid Perelman. At the same time, Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges and
Mank’s brother Joe were a Paramount; John Huston and Jerry Wald were writing
for Warner Bros.
“Mank”
could have used some polish of the type these pros did for thousands of scripts
during the Golden Era, but for the handful of movie fans still around who
relished that era, this movie isn’t to be missed.
HAMILTON
(2020)
I can’t remember any production—film,
television or stage—in the past 30 years that has been showered with such
universal acclaim as this Broadway musical. Overnight, Lin-Manuel Miranda was
heralded as a theatrical innovator, an acclaimed triple threat as a writer,
actor and singer.
Though I’d seen endless interviews with
the charismatic Miranda since “Hamilton” debuted in 2015 and knew the bullet
points that made it so special (a hip-hop score, multiracial cast, a fresh look
at a Founding Father), I was still surprised when I finally experienced the
musical, as the filmed version of the original Broadway show.
Not only did I find the lyrics and plot
pedantically dull, but the all-singing script does little more than offer a
Power Point version of the American Revolution and the first years of the
nation, with emphasis on the role of Alexander Hamilton.
But, to get right to the most baffling
aspect of the production, I never could figure out the point of the racially
incorrect casting. What statement is Miranda making by casting African American
actors as Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, among others?
If these were fictional characters I
would fully support racially blind casting—it’s the only way actors of color
are ever going to achieve equality in theater and film. But I cannot buy a
black Gen. Washington unless you are trying to make a point.
I’m all for a black Macbeth, an Asian
Willy Loman or a Latino Maggie the Cat, but the author better have something to
say if he casts a Chinese actor as FDR or a black man as JFK. As far as I could
discern, Miranda doesn’t. It’s all a stunt: it’s cool and, on its surface,
progressive. but nothing more.
I somewhat see why he cast himself as
Hamilton, an immigrant, like Miranda, who moved to New York. But the outsider
role doesn’t fit for Alexander, who found a spot as Washington’s righthand man
during the war and became the nation’s first secretary of the treasury.
There’s also the problem of Miranda’s
acting. This is an epic musical about a politician, with few set changes or
much in the way of spectacle. (In fact, the sets looked like something from a
spare drama rather than a high-energy musical.) It demands a bigger-than-life
performance and Miranda doesn’t deliver. He seems like a supporting performer
in his own story.
Diminishing Miranda’s presence is the
excellent work by others in the cast, including Daveed Diggs as both Lafayette
and Jefferson (again, why?), Phillipa Soo as Hamilton’s long suffering wife
Eliza, Leslie Odom Jr. as a conniving Burr and Jonathan Groff as a comical King
George.
I
know this will sound ridiculous, but I was more impressed with a high school
production of Miranda’s earlier musical, “In the Heights,” finding it ten times
more entertaining than his 11 Tony Award-winning megahit. To my ears, the score
to “Hamilton” wasn’t near as catchy or heartfelt as “In the Heights” and its
more expansive dance numbers didn’t come close to making up for its musical
lackings.
I will stay clear of taking on the
“facts” of the musical’s book; it clearly plays fast and loose with the details
and conveniently turns Jefferson into a “johnny come lately” to the nation’s
birth (yes, the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence). But even within
the musical, Miranda does a poor job of defining the central relationship
between Hamilton and Burr, whose duel is the predictable climax.
I’m not expert on the politics of the
early days of the nation, yet I didn’t learn anything from “Hamilton.” The idea
that this musical resurrected a neglected founder seem way overplayed—isn’t
this the same guy whose picture has been in everyone’s wallet for almost 100
years?
The upside is that watching the filmed
version saved me many “Hamiltons” that I was planning to shell out to see the
musical live when it returned to Los Angeles after the pandemic. Instead, I’m
looking forward to the film version of “In the Heights.”
THE
TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 (2020)
One of the great legacies of the 1960s
and ‘70s is the many protests marches, sit-ins and other public demonstrations
against government policies. In the tragic year of 1968, the growing discontent
over the Vietnam War culminated in a gathering of high-profile activists in
Chicago for the Democratic National Convention.
The resulting overreaction by the police
against the demonstrations overshadowed the nomination of Hubert Humphrey as
the media turned its camera across the street to Lincoln Park.
Almost a year later, after Richard Nixon
took office, the justice department decided to make an example of the leaders
whose groups were in Chicago, bringing conspiracy charges against eight
prominent leaders of activist organizations. (The case against Black Panther co-founder
Bobby Seale was dropped mid-trial, making it seven.)
The circus-like trial of these men is the
subject of the latest film by writer-director Aaron Sorkin, acclaimed
screenwriter of “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “The Social Network” and “Moneyball”
who made his directorial debut with “Molly’s Game” (2017).
Both educational and entertaining, this
slickly structured and well-written history serves as the perfect metaphor for
the clash of the establishment and the provocateurs who felt it was time for a
sea change.
The self-appointed front man of the group
is Tom Hayden, leader of the Students for a Democratic Society, based in
Berkeley, and portrayed by Oscar-winning Brit Eddie Redmayne as a man with an
air of entitlement and, to the dismay of his colleagues, a willingness to
compromise. Hayden, who later was a longtime California legislator and husband
of actress-activist Jane Fonda, works in concert with famed leftwing attorney
William Kunstler (Mark Rylance) to knock down the government’s case.
Yet the other defendants, especially the
incorrigibly rebellious Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen), leader of the
Yippies who delivers biting sarcasm in and out of court, don’t always cooperate
with the plans.
The film is strongest when this all-star
collection of social movers and shakers, living together during the trial,
debate the best way to change what they all believe is a broken system. It’s a
discussion that seems to have found new oxygen in 2020.
Cohen, whose own films I have little
interest in, steals every scene he’s in as Hoffman, a legendary disrupter and
the smartest guy in the room. Rylance, the great British stage actor, gives
another superb performance, as does Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the young
government prosecutor, who isn’t sure which side he should be on.
Reigning over it all is the foolish,
out-of-touch Nixon stand-in Judge Julius Hoffman, wonderfully played by Frank
Langella.
While occasionally the film slips into
caricature, especially in John Doman’s raving performance as Attorney General
John Mitchell, Sorkin does a good job of creating real people and making this 50-year-old
trial relevant.
I’M
THINKING OF ENDING THINGS (2020)
No Hollywood writer in recent years has
gone further in exploring the deepest recesses of the human brain and our
never-ending search for a place in the world than Charlie Kaufman. His
thoughtful but confused characters deliver dryly sarcastic, half-serious
dialogue in a world gone surreal as they push the rock up that damnable hill with
Sisyphus.
His best, “Being John Malkovich” (1999),
“Adaptation.” (2002), “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” (2002), “Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004) and “Synecdoche, New York” (2008)—which he
also directed—were the most daringly original and outlandishly entertaining
films of the first decade of the century.
Yet his latest, released on Netflix, left
me scratching my head; not only did his point escape me but it was about as an
entertaining as a Halllmark Christmas movie. Not unlike his stop-action,
Claymation-like 2015 picture, “Anomalisa,” “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”
tries to capture the quirky, somewhat random reality of contemporary
relationships.
We first meet the 20something couple,
played by Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons (coincidence that this couple is
played by actors with the virtual same first name?) as he drives them to his
parents’ home for dinner. During the drive, while college professor Jake,
trying to impress, goes on about a variety of topics, the audience hears the
young woman’s thoughts (she’s given no name) on the tentative state of their
relationship.
It’s clear Kaufman has steered us into his
“twilight zone” when the parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) let them
wait downstairs for what seems like hours before finally greet them. At dinner,
the conversation is odd, but just close enough to the uncomfortable chit-chat
we’ve all engaged in during similar circumstances. Yet the girlfriend doesn’t
seem to notice the horror-film atmosphere of the family home, even after the
parents age about 30 years after dinner. Time does fly, but then, suddenly,
they are middle-aged again.
At this point, Kaufman is just getting
warmed up. When they finally leave
(escape, really) the parents’ house, instead of heading home, Jake drives to
the local high school where his girlfriend meets what seems to be his older doppelganger—the
school janitor—and then watches a pair of ballet dancers performing. The last
30 minutes plays like a grad school student’s attempt at a David Lynch film.
We’d need to be inside Kaufman’s head
(“Being Charlie Kaufman”?) to decipher this metaphorical mess. Buckley, who
played Judy Garland’s assistant in “Judy,” and Plemons, memorable as the lonely
neighbor in “Game Night,” seem totally committed to characters stuck in a
surreal world, but I don’t think they understood what the hell Kaufman was
getting at any more than I did.
TARGET
ZERO (1955)
For about 10 years, starting in the mid-1940s,
Richard Conte was one of the most interesting actors in Hollywood, playing
mostly cold-hearted criminals. But he was just as convincing as a working stiff
battling a corrupt system or a hard-nosed soldier.
In a series of film noirs, including “Cry
of the City” (1948) “Thieves Highway” (1949), “The Blue Gardenia” (1953),
“Highway Dragnet” (1954) and, at his best as the ruthless Mr. Brown, in “The
Big Combo” (1955), he established himself as a mainstay of the genre, an actor
who always made the least of his films better. This intense performer, discovered by Elia
Kazan and John Garfield while serving as a singing waiter, worked on Broadway
before scoring a supporting role in the World War II hit, “Guadalcanal Diary”
(1943).
Before his career moved from movies to
television—where he spent most of the late 1950s and 1960s—he starred in this
well-made Korean War actioner as Lt. Flagler, whose small patrol unit joins
forces with a British tank unit to retake a crucial hillside position against
overwhelming odds.
Along with the usual tension between the
Brits and the Americans, this is the rare war film that adds romance into the
mix. A U.N. worker, Anne Galloway (Peggie Castle, best known for the TV series
“Lawman”), is rescued after her co-worker is killed, just before the Americans
enter the picture. The British sergeant (Richard Wyler) has eyes for Anne, but
so does Conte’s Flagler.
Sounds a bit cornball, but it plays out
believably as scripted by James Warner Bellah (who later co-wrote “The Man Who
Shot Liberty Valance”) and Sam Rolfe (the creator of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”)
and directed by veteran film editor Harmon Jones. The picture also features a fine
supporting cast, including Charles Bronson, L.Q. Jones and Chuck Connors.
After playing the police pal of P.I. Frank
Sinatra in “Tony Rome” (1967) and “Lady in Cement” (1968), Conte scored his best-known
late career role, as Don Barzini, the mafioso rival to the Corleone family in
“The Godfather” (1972). Conte fit the role perfectly and might have scored an
Oscar nomination if the film hadn’t featured so many memorable performances.
Though he had often been cast in distinctly
Italian-American roles, this one was career defining. He spent much of his
remaining life acting in the Italian cinema. Conte died of a heart attack in
1975 at the age of 65.
FIRST
COW (2020)
Like most of her films, this Kelly
Reichardt picture gives minimalists a bad name. Her leisurely paced, sparsely
scripted movies have grown less and less interesting over the years.
As much
as I enjoyed “Wendy and Lucy” (2008), about a woman (the always brilliant
Michelle Williams) facing hard times with only her loyal dog to count on, I
tired of her approach with “Meek’s Cutoff” (2010) and “Certain Women”
(2016).
In her latest, the unlikely pair of King-lu
(Orion Lee), a Chinese drifter, and Cookie (John Magaro), a white cook just
recently escaped from a gang of fur trappers, end up as roommates in a small
Oregon town in the early part of the 19th Century.
They cash in when Cookie stars baking a
French biscuit that everyone in town can’t get enough of. But the secret
ingredient is the fresh milk the men “steal” from the town’s wealthy landowner
and his only cow.
The highlight of the film is the heartfelt
relationship Cookie forms with the cow as he sneaks into the barn each night
for milking. But you just know this setup isn’t going to end well.
The script, written by Reichardt and Jonathan
Raymond, whose novel it’s based on, adds little of interest to this bare-bones
plot. Both men are somewhat fish-out-of-water character, not really suited for
the pioneer world of the West, yet they do display the kind of gumption that
was to help define the American spirit.
My impression of the film was so slight
that I couldn’t imagine it gaining any critical traction, even in this
one-of-a-kind movie year. Yet it started showing up on Top 10 lists and then
was voted best picture by the New York Film Critics Circle.
At
best, it’s a minor slice of 19th Century life, but maybe in 2020
that passes for the year’s top film.
HARUM
SCARUM (1965)
One of the more foolish traditions I
started a few years back is watching at least one Elvis Presley film every
year.
It’s depressing to realize that I’m just a
third of the way through (10 of 31). While I remain a fan of Elvis the singer
and recognize his importance in 20th Century popular music, with
every film I watch it’s more astonishing just how bad of an actor he was. This
cartoonish adventure movie is especially lame—even judged by other Elvis
films—but what really struck me was Presley’s lack of growth as an actor. This
was his 19th film in 10 years, yet he seems utterly clueless as to
how to read a line or act naturally in a scene.
Even an untrained performer (think of
Frank Sinatra, Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton) develops some skills after
numerous times in front of the camera—except the King. Actually, in a few of
his earlier films, “Flaming Star” (1960) and “Wild in the Country” (1961) he
shows promise, but by the mid-1960s he was just going through the motions.
You
could argue that no actor could have been very inspired by this role,
singer-actor Johnny Tyronne. The idiotic plot, slightly less coherent than an
episode of “The Monkees,” opens with a roomful of Arab dignitaries watching an
action movie starring Tyronne called “Sands of the Desert.” After it ends,
Johnny sings for the group as part of this promotional tour.
Invited to one of the attendee’s
country—allured by a beautiful woman, of course—Johnny is kidnapped and forced
to participate in an assassination plot. One of the most humorous aspects of
the story is that, having seen Tyronne defeat a gang of henchman in the movie,
the Arab plotters believe this actor capable of doing the same in real life.
Yet it’s never played for a joke: Johnny’s movie marital arts skills are
portrayed as a match for any trained killer.
Not only is Presley especially
wooden—even when singing—but he’s surrounded by mediocrity. Mary Ann Mobley,
one-time Miss America, playing the king’s daughter and the love interest, seems
to be dazed by Elvis’s hair, barely managing to finish her lines. At least she
did improve over the years, during a busy television career that last until
2003.
Michael Ansara, who made a career playing
foreign bad guys, offers up the usual cliches as does Billy Barty as a
pickpocket. The entire film feels like a first run-through.
Then there’s the sets, which you’d think
would at least be extravagantly lavish to make up for the grade-school level
actions scenes and silly plot. Instead, the movie looks like it was shot on a discarded
TV set from “Batman.”
Presley’s film career came to an end in
1969, a year after his acclaimed comeback television special that returned him
to his musical kingdom. But I wonder, if he had lived longer (he died in 1977
at age 42) might he have returned to the big screen?
Probably, especially if manager Col. Tom
Parker was still running his business affairs. Can’t you see Elvis in “Police
Academy” or as a fight promoter in a “Rocky” movie? And you just know that Scorsese would have
found a role for him in “Casino.” But trust me, no matter what he would have
done, he could not have stooped lower than “Harum Scarum.”
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