A crumpled hero

As was the case with The Artist and La La Land, critics are calling David Fincher’s new movie a “love letter to old Hollywood”. Like those two Oscar winners, it uses gorgeous old- fashioned cinematography to take us behind the scenes of the movie business.

But this time, there’s a disconnect between the look and feel of the film. To me, this scathing Netflix- produced drama felt more like Fincher dumping Hollywood than penning it a love letter.

The Social Network director finds an unusual hero in the crumpled form of Gary Oldman’s Herman J Mankiewicz, the booze- sodden reporter who shared a screenwriting gong with Orson Welles for Citizen Kane. To Fincher, working from a script written by his late father Jack,

“Mank” was an underappreciated genius who was broken on the wheel of a cynical and morally bankrupt money- making machine.

The story begins in a remote cottage in 1940, where Welles ( Tom Burke) has sent Mank to write a film based on the life of media mogul William

FLASHBACK Charles Dance as Hearst

Amanda Seyfried with Gary Oldman

Randolph Hearst, who had a long affair with actress Marion Davies ( Amanda Seyfried).

As the writer dictates the script to his secretary ( Lily Collins), flashbacks take us to MGM in the 1930s and to the San Simeon estate of Hearst ( Charles Dance), where Mank loses his self- respect playing the mogul’s drunken “court jester”.

The screwball dialogue is a delight, the monochrome cinematography is gorgeous and the performances are excellent. But while the film has a firm grasp of time and place, it has neither the heart nor the narrative drive of those Oscar- winning movies about movies. It will be catnip to film buffs but fans of Ryan Gosling’s tap dancing will need to look elsewhere.