◎ Black Selection Ming
Breaking through the "blockbuster" mode, the director's most ambitious work
In 1941, a 25-year-old director who was making a film for the first time, a maverick and alcoholic screenwriter, a talented videographer, and a team of stage actors and radio announcers from New York, supported by the Raiden Hua film company, could make a film without restriction and according to their own wishes. So they created a miracle in the history of cinema, a story that many people already know, and that is Citizen Kane.
There is no doubt that "Citizen Kane" is a classic in the history of world cinema, saying that "not seeing this movie is equivalent to not seeing a movie", I am afraid that it is impossible to deny that almost all college film students have used this masterpiece to "pull the film", even Roger Ebert, a god figure, has seen it more than thirty times, or it is difficult to remember all the scene transformations in it. People who make movies have not seen "Citizen Kane", just as people who are known as calligraphers say that they have not copied Wang Xizhi, then his art will not be reliable.
So we don't have to talk about the classicity of Citizen Kane, which is undisputed, but David Finch's new work "Mank" is still worth discussing: although this film has successfully attracted the attention of various fans, although it is far less complex than "Citizen Kane", it is not so easy to understand its essence after watching it once, especially when our understanding of the film has been brainwashed for a long time by the "blockbuster" produced by Hollywood assembly line, and this is precisely the director Finch wants to break through the "blockbuster" "Mode, try to direct one of the most ambitious works.
It must be admitted that Hollywood has gathered first-class and talented artists from all over the world and from all over the world, but it is difficult to say whether they can show their personal artistic ambitions (we see in "Mank" that this was the case almost a century ago), because the artistic personality of the individual always gives way to the "box office", so Hollywood art is always discounted. For example, "City of Angels", based on Wim Wenders' remake of "Under the Berlin Sky", turns the philosophical reflection on life and death into a sweet eight-o'clock soap opera.
In finch's own case, his remake of the Swedish film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is also more "commercial" than the original. But every aspiring Hollywood director has their "work of a lifetime" in mind, so that's what "Mank" meant to Finch. Finch isn't limited to the thriller director we usually think of — he did prove himself through the film.
The Great Depression hit China hard
Stylistically, it's a biopic about the famous American screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz writing Citizen Kane in 60 days. Of course, this is also a "meta-movie", which seems to be a 126-minute commentary of "Citizen Kane". Usually Hollywood-style biopics focus on the portrayal of personality, but often the problem is also here, it will infinitely enlarge a certain personality of the protagonist, sometimes people will be mistaken for a superhero movie; there are also many biopics that focus on the disillusionment of the "American Dream", but the conclusion will always make you think that this is a "character problem", blame himself.
While "social background" may seem to many to be an old, outdated literary term, as if it had crossed over from a prehistoric textbook, what is really problematic is the sociologization of its vulgarity, not the "social context" itself. For example, we can certainly conclude from Finch's previous film that the film "Mank" once again explores the "seven deadly sins" of human nature, but this view is undoubtedly limited, if you only start with human personality, it is likely to be made into "a confession of an alcoholic", which will lead to some kind of actor-centered hysteria - the public is naïve to think that evolutionary attitude is to have "acting", especially for gary Oldman, who plays a lot of famous perverts, which is actually dangerous.
The public is amorous and likes to substitute for the plot, but at the same time it is the most ruthless. People always classify film and television dramas as "entertainment", thinking that it is just play, in fact, the process of film production, from onlookers, publicity, telling, watching, reaction, gossip, it shows the richness of social consciousness far greater than literature. One of the most successful aspects of Finch's ambitious work, in my opinion, is that it fits perfectly into the "social context" and is very natural. Why did this film about the 1941 film take place in 1934 for the most part? Because it was a special year, Finch valued his "social background."
To put it simply, from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s, the United States suffered the great depression. When financial capital is arrogant, the common people listen to the "experts" to borrow money to buy houses, and listen to the "experts" to mortgage the real estate for money to frantically speculate in stocks, while the capitalists with a keen sense of smell sell stocks when they see the situation is not good, use wheat and corn as fuel, and pour milk into the Mississippi River. A large number of ordinary people who think they have entered the middle class have gone bankrupt and returned to their original form overnight.
Fundamentally, this was due to the implementation of the "gold standard" in the US financial system at that time, and gold reserves were insufficient. At this time, the silver miners in the United States advocated their own interests, resulting in a soaring silver purchase price, thus passing the crisis to silver-based China, although the Nationalist government and Roosevelt "greeted" at the time, he pretended not to hear (because it was he who passed the "Silver Act" for the vote for the presidential election), coupled with Japan's "assist", China became the export of the US financial crisis, which also led to the crazy outflow of Chinese silver, and the economy was seriously hit. In this crisis, capitalist ideology exposed its ugly side, and another serious consequence was that in Europe it contributed to the rise of populism and the rise of the Nazis to power.
This economic crisis was intuitively reflected in China's left-wing literature and art in the 1930s. It is worth noting that among the world-class literary figures who influenced China at that time, in addition to the Soviet and Russian writers, the American left-wing writer Upton Sinclair, even the translation of "Sinclair" was written by Mr. Lu Xun. Sinclair's novels were translated into Chinese at the time, including his famous book Slaughterhouse.
From today's point of view, Sinclair's sense of participation and criticism of writers in society has greatly influenced left-wing writers such as Xiao Hong, in the more modern words of Foucault, "must defend society."
Sinclair, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is definitely a best-selling author, but lives a simple life, donates generous remuneration to writers in financial difficulties, and also sponsors another masterpiece of film history, that is, Eisenstein's "Long Live Mexico", which is also a young film master.
In Manke, Mankiewicz points out that he "went to Mexico with capitalist money to make a revolution" (to the effect that) when Sinclair, though a representative of the outspokenness of the people, was also accused by the chaebols of being a spokesman for communism (i.e., using the people's fear of the Soviet Union to make another "stigmatization"). In 1934, Sinclair ran for governor of California, but lost to republican Merriam. Of course, the release of this film in the year of the US election cannot be said to be without a little projection of reality.
Mankiewicz's position, what Citizen Kane looks like
Spending so much ink describing the "social context" is necessary because the core of Mank is built on this gubernatorial election, not just the creation around Citizen Kane. Only when we understand the author's position will we have a deeper understanding of why Mankiewicz created Citizen Kane. Sinclair, who had a vendetta against Hollywood's powerful men, wrote satirically about them, describing them as Mankiewicz, "Caught in the middle of his pants."
In the film, Mankiewicz does not hesitate to offend the Screen Actors Guild and even the entire MGM company, and votes for Sinclair — we must know the importance of the film industry to California, it is not only a major pillar industry, it is also a machine that manipulates ideology, for tycoons like Hirst, even directly affects international politics, and this is also a test for film industry practitioners.
There is a bridge in the film, In order to get the opportunity to make a movie, Mankiewicz's friend Shirley made a series of fake interviews with Sinclair's supporters against his will, and secretly attacked Sinclair, which eventually led to his own depression and even tragic ending. In the film, Mankiewicz quotes Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany, to sum up the incident: "If you continue to lie loudly to the public, they will be deceived."
Mankiewicz was an immigrant from Germany (the surname is most likely of Eastern European descent, and the protagonist of Sinclair's Slaughterhouse is an immigrant from Lithuania). In the film, when the female secretary learns that he helped people in a town in his hometown escape the Nazis, she can't help but change her opinion of him and be in awe of him. What is even more awe-inspiring is that he has done all this in secret, and he is shy when he is found to have done good things - which is in stark contrast to his usual self-indulgence and arrogance. It's more like a real, lifely "nice guy" look.
His time is not ordinary, so his "protagonist position" is very important. It was on the basis of this position that he decided his view of William Hurst, the great king of the American newspaper industry (the archetype of "Citizen Kane"), that we see Citizen Kane as we see it now.
Drunkards are all sober people in the end
Mankiewicz was not a communist, and could only say that there were some socialist tendencies, but he could see clearly the kind of understanding that he had as an elite intellectual: the irrationality of the social structure, the greed of the oligarchs, the falsehood of Hollywood. At the same time, as an intellectual, he also understands how many things should be expressed in his position so as not to lose the bottom line, including Hurst's private life. Writing such a subject would of course subject him to ethical cross-examination, because in the eyes of others, Hirst treated him well and treated him as a guest of honor, and Hearst's mistress Marianne Davis (who is called "Daddy" in the film, slightly similar to the "dry daddy" in Chinese today) can be regarded as his good friend.
He would not attack directly as Sinclair did: "We have witnessed the newspaper king place his mistress in his city of palaces and churches, which are littered with garbage ornaments from Europe, and the vast surrounding land is reserved for zebras and giraffes only." Mankiewicz knows his place in the minds of these oligarchs, which is no different from the story of "mu monkey and crown" mentioned many times in the film - the monkey wears a gold chain and thinks that he is extremely important, and others cannot do without it, but in the end it is a monkey. But he couldn't have treated Hearst and Marianne the way Sinclair did— and still, the script ran into a lot of resistance, including threats to his career.
As a some high-ranking intellectual, he is the "too much-informed person" in Hollywood, and in Hollywood movies, such a role does not live to the end, and he has to "receive a box lunch" in the middle, and the key is that he himself knows this well. The drunkard is a sober, loving person in the end, and the audience does not need to substitute too much for his "disillusionment", because From the beginning Mankiewicz did not fantasize, this is where he far surpasses the vast majority of the audience.
That is why in Citizen Kane the image is not thin, but extraordinarily complex, rich, and full: sometimes a Don Quixote idealist, sometimes a Faustian soul seller; sometimes he is tall, sometimes very small, just bluffing. In the film, Marianne's projection is that of a deeply resentful woman playing puzzles in an empty castle and finally leaving Kane, which is different from reality. But we also can't ignore the image of the "rose bud" in Citizen Kane, which has been read in various ways, even with pedantic over-interpretation, and is said to be actually a cryptic joke of Mankiewicz, because Hirst privately uses the word "rose bud" to refer to Marianne's private parts — he is really the one who "knows too much" about it.
The greatness of Orson Wells is undeniable
Similarly, we can't deny the greatness of Orson Wells through this film, because the film is ultimately a director's work. He was the most important author of Citizen Kane, followed by the cameraman Toland, who realized the artistic image conceived by the director and who ushered in the era of the great deep-focus lens that changed the history of cinema.
This involves a question that Tarkovsky asked: "I don't know why talented people do screenwriting." The film gives us the answer, that is, Mankiewicz wrote the script in order to pay off the gambling debt, which was a kind of "demotion" at the time, and ten minutes before the film, he said through the MGM executive: "He is just a screenwriter".
The screenwriter's "identity" in the film and television industry is subtle— once the film is made, it becomes another work and no longer belongs to him. Therefore, there are not a few people who have changed from screenwriters to directors. For a screenwriter like Mankiewicz, the odds of meeting a talented director like Orson Wells are not high. But we can't forget the characteristics of his script, for example, the lines he wrote were fast-paced, very "talkative", like quarrels, Finch achieved this very well, of course, it is more difficult for us to forget the moving points in the script, and finally let us revisit this line where Orson Wells and David Finch have different expressions:
"A man tends to remember a lot of things that you think he won't remember. Take me. One day in 1896, I took a ferry to Jersey City. The moment our boat went offshore, another ferry came right ashore. I saw a girl in that boat about to get off. She wore a white dress and a white parasol. I saw her for only a second, and she didn't see me at all, but I dare say I've thought of her a few times a month since. ”