“A cardinal sin too many biopics indulge in is checking off the beat-by-beat life excerpts, ignoring a specified vision for depicting their real-life protagonists in favor of broad strokes.
“Mank, directed by David Fincher and based on a screenplay written by his late father Jack, is no such kind of biopic, thankfully.
“Inspired by Pauline Kael’s spicy (and since widely discredited) New Yorker tome “Raising Kane,” which argued Herman J. Mankiewicz deserved sole credit for the Citizen Kane script, not Orson Welles, the film is as much about Hollywood’s immersion in politics as it is about a writer struggling to finish what would become known as his masterpiece.”
Read more at NPR
