What a shocking waste of a fabulous cast, shut into a straight jacketed farrago.
The script is self-indulgent, over ornamented with vocalised flourishes that offer no character insight nor does it advance the story, such as it is.
The central character Mank has been badly injured in a car smash but for reasons that aren’t clear he is moved into a house with a small staff devoted to taking care of his needs. In exchange it seems he is required to deliver a script. All the caregivers are female but seem peripheral to the action. Such as it is. Knowing him to be a stalwart drunk why would a “friend” also install a drunk’s paradise of doctored liquor. This seems counter intuitive if you are hoping to get a coherent cogent piece of work at the end of his sojourn. Is this person looking to sabotage Manks efforts on every level.
Mank appears to be a dedicated hopeless drunk also married to an enabler. At the start wifey, also known as poor Sarah is undressing him as he is incapable. His parting remark was why did she put up with him. She says she doesn’t know,I want to shout at the screen telling her to run out the door and not to look back. His appalling behaviour begs the question, just why did she put up with this unpleasant drunk. He is charmless and boorish unable to pick up on the nuances of distress in others, making cheap cracks about fighter pilots to his erstwhile secretary even as she gets a letter saying he is MIA as the ship carrying his plane has gone down off the coast of Norway.
Drunks are extremely uninteresting by and large, is there anything more tedious than the company of drunks. Their emotional incontinence wracks up my total lack of patience for those that cannot control their behaviour. Only babies and those under 12 should be given the grace of complete forgiveness not maudlin middle-aged men. Or women! Although all the women in this are all rather buttoned up apart from Rosebud, paramour of Randolf Hearst. Rosebud is used as a device to raise the concerns of the times, treated as an indulged child able to voice anything because as she says who listens to me.
It just doesn’t jell as there is nobody who engenders your interest or compassion. A wasted opportunity and the black and white staging added less than zero. Dull dull dull.