Why David Fincher's Munk is worth watching for all lovers of good cinema

Famous story behind the scenes

Herman Mankiewicz, nicknamed Munk, is a man without whom classic Hollywood would certainly have been a little paler and boring. Starting with journalism, in the mid-1920s, Mankiewicz switched his activities to screenwriting and quickly gained solid status. He helped create many paintings that later became legendary, up to the landmark "Wizard of Oz".

But there is only one subtlety: ordinary viewers did not know too much about him, since Munk's name was not indicated in the credits. The studios had many reasons for this, one of which was their interest in the German film market. Mankevich was a radical opponent of fascism, and therefore the pictures, where he was listed as a screenwriter, were banned for distribution in Germany. So his name had to be hidden, although the status of the author in professional circles did not diminish too much.

Alcoholism caused much more trouble for Mankevich. In a state of intoxication, Munk often behaved unrestrainedly, bringing on a lot of troubles. And if we add to this gambling addiction and excessive directness on the verge of rudeness, it becomes obvious that working with this author was very difficult.

In 1939, after an accident, Herman Mankevich lay with a broken leg, and one day he was visited by aspiring director Orson Welles, offering to work together on a film. Trying to shield the collaborator from all distractions and, most importantly, alcohol, he sent Monk, accompanied by a nurse and a secretary, to the ranch, where he wrote his best script. Thus began the story of the great Citizen Kane.

These are not movie spoilers. Its plot cannot be spoiled at all: "Munk" is not about sudden twists of fate and intrigues, it is a living human drama and the tragedies of talented people.

Even more interesting is that Fincher hardly mentions the story that many expect from the picture.

After all, Munk again did not want to be credited and presented "Citizen Kane" as the sole creation of Wells. And he himself seems to have believed that he created the picture alone. After that, a lingering feud between the scriptwriter and the director began, each of whom claimed to have invented a significant part of the plot and dialogues.

History has put everything in its place: the script for "Citizen Kane" mostly belongs to Mankiewicz, which does not detract from Wells' merits: it was the director who created the incredible visual approach and liveliness of the action.

But in "Monka" Orson Welles is a purely secondary character, more often he does appear behind the scenes, and the confrontation between the heroes results in just one, albeit very emotional scene. The rest of the picture is devoted specifically to Mankiewicz's work on the script and his past.

But this does not translate into a simple coherent drama about the throes of creativity. Fincher turns history into a leisurely yet highly intense puzzle game. As "Citizen Kane" was gradually assembled from separate pieces and plot elements, so "Munk" in numerous flashbacks analyzes the appearance of script characters, inscribing it into the events that took place throughout the US film industry.

There is another exciting story in the making of Citizen Kane. Namely - the communication of the screenwriter with the tycoon William Randolph Hirst and close friendship with his mistress, actress Marion Davis. The main character of "Citizen Kane" is clearly written off from this particular millionaire, which, of course, he was extremely unhappy with.

As a result, "Munk" looks both significant and very unexpected at the same time. Fincher does not turn the plot into a retelling of the well-known facts of the confrontation between Mankiewicz and Wells, or even Hirst's pressure.

The picture just provides a frame and allows you to get acquainted with the whole world of cinema, concentrating on the life of one person, the most important person in this story.

Maximum image reliability

In terms of approach to filming, David Fincher is a real nerd in the best sense of the word. Each of his films is full of many elaborate details. That is why he was considered a master of thrillers: that "Seven", that "Zodiac" did not just tell the stories of maniacs - they completely immersed the viewer in the world of investigation.

Even the biographical picture "The Social Network" about Mark Zuckerberg, Fincher managed to turn into one of the main films of the decade.

Munk is arguably the pinnacle of Fincher's perfectionism. At the request of the director, the entire entourage was created from real old things that were found in the archives: clothes, dishes, typewriters. Even soundtrack authors Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - the director's favorites and part-time members of Nine Inch Nails - used 1940s instruments and microphones with all their noises and wheezes to record.

It is important that this approach at Monk is not just Fincher's exercise in skill and bragging to the public and colleagues. Maximalism serves two main purposes. Firstly, it is enough to look at most film, and even more so TV projects in a retroatmosphere to understand the difference. More often than not, the past looks like a kind of gingerbread house, elegant and completely implausible. "Munk" is a rare case when one might think that one is watching, of course, not the era itself, but its reflection in the cinema of that time.

At the same time, Fincher does not act like Robert Eggers, who filmed his "Lighthouse" with ancient cameras. Still, "Munk" is not an art house, but a mass cinema. But the picture is so skillfully aged that it is easy to believe that the film was released at about the same years as Citizen Kane itself, and then it was carefully restored, without being able to remove some of the obstacles: marks for gluing, scratches and other damage to the old films.

And secondly, David Fincher directed the story of the creator of Citizen Kane using countless quotes from this film. Anyone who has seen Wells' painting will recognize in the bottle that falls out of their hands a hint of one of the most emotional scenes.

Despite the fact that the plot is two completely different stories of different scales, the visual techniques that operator Eric Messerschmidt uses in Monka clearly copy the classics: an emphasis on several points of different distances at once, shooting characters from below, light falling from a window. Even the transitions between scenes seemed to come from the classics, when there was no way to change frames more gracefully.

This culminates in Wells' appearance scene: he is shown in exactly the same way as his character in the future film. Then the parallel immediately turns into irony: Munk realizes that this moment needs to be included in the script.

But the mere mention of "Citizen Kane" does not end there. "Munk" refers to all of classic Hollywood, bringing in a lot of real-life personalities that movie connoisseurs will recognize in the episodes, and openly poking fun at the standards of studio work. The acquaintance of Mankiewicz and Davis is a clear homage to the filming of mediocre Westerns.

And even inventing the plot of a horror movie on the go is the height of irony over the countless pictures about monsters that were so loved in the United States in the 1930s. And here we can only guess: David Fincher really wanted to show Mankiewicz's dislike for such hack, or he directly hints at his dislike for too consumer cinema.

A very personal story

For David Fincher himself, "Munk" is not just another film (although he almost did not shoot very passable films). The thing is that the taste and love for cinema was instilled in the future director by his father, Jack Fincher. David watched Citizen Kane with him as a child.

And then his father, who had worked as a journalist for a long time, decided to become a screenwriter and wrote "Manka". By the way, he initially wanted to devote the plot to the confrontation between Mankiewicz and Wells, but David dissuaded him.

The director wanted to shoot a picture based on a script by Jack Fincher since the 90s, planning to invite Kevin Spacey to the main role. But he never managed to get the approval of the producers: they did not want to release a black-and-white drama, expecting a low audience interest in advance.

The streaming service Netflix helped bring the project to life, for which David Fincher did a lot: he produced "House of Cards", "Love, Death and Robots" and, of course, "Mindhunter". Tired of his latest project, the director wanted to take a break, but the platform's management encouraged him to make any film he wanted, with full creative control. Here the time has come for "Monka".

Alas, Jack Fincher passed away in 2003 without ever seeing a single picture of his script. But in this story there is a certain cyclicality and a connection with the fate of the on-screen characters: Mankevich, like Fincher's father, is probably known from one film, which was shot by a daring original director without the influence of the producers.

Perhaps this is why Munk is not just a historical drama. In it, a lot of personal things from the director himself regularly slip through. Isn't that why Wells is so reminiscent of Fincher himself? In the personality of Mankevich himself - an intelligent, ironic and infinitely intelligent man with a difficult fate - the features of his father are probably visible.

And if Fincher speaks about the main character with great love, then the rest of the show business gets in full from the film.

"Munk" is a sharp rebuke to Hollywood, with its rigid framework of creativity and unwillingness to offend those who pay money. In the picture, the unfortunate creators are shown over and over again: someone is sold to the system, someone flies out due to a reluctance to cooperate with it. And the bosses only want to preserve and exaggerate their fortune.

Politics also gets it: producers and tycoons appear as real predators, who care about the interests of the local elections more than the arrival of the fascists. They are even ready for forgery and they themselves act almost by the methods of Goebbels for the sake of achieving their own, good, in their words, goal.

Moreover, the plot from the past justifies the director in advance: he does not seem to talk about the modern agenda, does not try to play on topical topics. But Citizen Kane seems to be about fictional characters. However, any attentive viewer will notice the timeless, alas, themes.

A film that everyone can understand

Based on the huge number of descriptions and historical references in this article, it may seem that "Munk" is a picture exclusively for moviegoers. Only those who are familiar with the work and life of Mankiewicz and Wells will be able to understand it; they have watched Citizen Kane at least twice in the course of Fincher's biography and in addition to it.

But of all this, only the last is true. And that is because this is a very interesting film, from which any spectator with taste will get great pleasure.

You may not know anything about the director or about the real basis of events. Munk will still be an amazing piece of work.

First of all, this is a story of overcoming: Mankevich fights with circumstances, and even more often with himself. Moreover, David Fincher is not inclined to the typical moralizing. Even the alcoholism of the screenwriter he does not present as absolute evil.

Here, of course, the talent of Gary Oldman comes to the fore. By inviting the actor for the main role, Fincher even sacrificed the historical truth: Mankiewicz was slightly over 40, Oldman was already 62. Although it is enough to look for archival photos to understand: the unhealthy lifestyle made the writer old early. But for the director, it was not the portrait resemblance that was more important, but Oldman's ability to play an unprepossessing and charming character at the same time.

It is clear that Munk himself is to blame for a significant part of his troubles, and his attitude towards everyone around him raises many questions. But at the same time, it is simply impossible not to admire this character. Oldman is completely immersed in the role again, and behind his acting you can no longer see the actor himself, as if he looked and behaved that way all his life.

All the others are, of course, just a framing of Monk's story. But one cannot help but admire Fincher's portrayal of female characters, as if opposing the real story to many films of the 30s and 40s, where they were made exclusively functions.

The beautiful Marion Davis, played by Amanda Seyfried, is significantly smarter than she wants to appear. The typist Rita, played by Lily Collins, literally turns into the conscience of Monk himself and is responsible for almost the most emotional moments in the film. And even about the wife of the screenwriter Sarah (Tuppence Middleton), with her infinite wisdom and love, there is no need to speak.

And to all the dramatic, political and economic twists and turns is added one more typical Fincher component - an amazing ability to film dialogues. The heroes here simply speak endlessly, but this does not tire: there are a lot of great jokes in the text, which perfectly dilutes the serious plot.

At the same time, the characters are not static. They are almost Tarantino-like all the time moving somewhere, making the picture very dynamic and allowing not only to listen, but also to admire the situation. The mastery reaches its highest peak in Munk's monologue about Don Quixote, where Shakespeare's tragedy and thriller-style presentation are mixed in an almost comic setting. It is on these combinations that the whole film rests.

Of course, "Munk" is still not exactly a mass movie: it is too slow, historical and conversational. But David Fincher for two hours sends the viewer on a journey through old Hollywood and, most importantly, the mind of a creative person.

In the history of the creation of Citizen Kane, he allows you to see how any story is formed: from pieces of memories, acute events, fantasies, jokes, grievances and pain. For the sake of this, it is worth seeing and loving "Manka". At the same time, having enjoyed the beautiful filming and amazing acting.