"Mank" and "Ammonite"

Time to get cracking on the prestige films.

I'm not sure what to make of "Mank," a film about the writing of "Citizen Kane," designed to look like a film made in the era of "Citizen Kane."  The subject matter is fascinating - the struggles of Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) to write the "Kane" screenplay, under intense pressure from director Orson Welles (Tom Burke) and studio RKO.  The film paints a picture of Mank as a shambling alcoholic who writes the screenplay while convalescing from a broken leg.  He's aided by a secretary, Rita (Lily Collins), who notices the protagonist of the new script resembles newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance).  A good amount of the film is spent on flashbacks to a younger Mank developing a friendship with Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), and his gradual disillusionment with the Hollywood establishment.

I found it difficult to get on the same wavelength as "Mank."  I knew enough about "Citizen Kane" and its creation to follow along with the action and keep the characters straight, but I didn't find much of the material compelling.  David Fincher is one of my favorite directors, but "Mank" is wildly different from anything else he's made, a black and white period piece that spends the bulk of its efforts on aping the cinematography and filming techniques of the 1940s.  This is all very lovely to look at, but there's no getting away from the fact that the film is slow, lengthy, often very sedate, and if you don't already know and appreciate "Citizen Kane," you're not going to get much help.  "Mank" is stuffed with references to "Kane," but I was surprised at how little direct evocation there was.  On the other hand, "Mank" is clearly not anywhere near the level of "Citizen Kane" in quality, and leaning too heavily on their association would have only made that more obvious. 

Gary Oldman, despite being decades too old for the role, delivers a strong performance as the spiraling Mank, and Amanda Seyfried does an excellent job of making Marion Davies insightful and self-aware.  There's a dinner party scene, where Mank has a drunken tirade, that has the kind of energy I wish had been more present in the rest of the picture.  I like the angle that Mank witnessing the greed and manipulativeness of the studio bosses made him so bitter - and causes "Mank" to be slyly topical - but his relationships with Hearst and Davies aren't established well enough to make their falling out as impactful as it should be.  I can admire everything it took to get this film made, in the way that Fincher wanted, but like most passion projects, "Mank" is inevitably for a very niche audience.  And it's probably saying something that a film nerd like me doesn't feel like part of that niche.  

Now on to "Ammonite," which is very easy, but probably unfair, to characterize as the anti - "Portrait of a Lady on Fire."  It posits a lesbian relationship between two 19th century scientists, Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) and Charlotte Murschison (Saoirse Ronan) in the 1840s.  Anning is a self-taught paleontologist, well known and respected, but not part of the scientific establishment of the time due to her class and gender.  We meet her when her fortunes are on the wane, living with her mother Molly (Gemma Jones) and eking out a living selling fossils near the harsh beaches of Lyme Regis, where she goes searching for new finds daily.  An aspiring geologist, Roderick Murchison (James McArdle), barges into her life one day, and ends up leaving his melancholic young wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) in the Annings' care.  

"Ammonite" is a showcase for Winslet's performance as Mary Anning.  Ronan does good work here as Murchison, a privileged young woman learning to escape tragedy and break out of her shell, but it's Winslet who is the main event.  Anning first presents a brusque, difficult front, a hard shell formed out of necessity after years of poverty and social isolation.  She speaks roughly, moves roughly, and seems to shun human company almost instinctively.  Little by little, Winslet exposes her softer interiors and sad history.  This culminates in a quiet romance with a fairly graphic sex scene.  However, "Ammonite" is less a romance than it is a character study, and doesn't indulge itself in sentiment for very long.  

The dialogue is sparse, and much of the storytelling is done through simply observing the three women living in the harsh environment of the Southern coastline.  Director Francis Lee's images are gray and bleak, and the cold seems to seep through the screen.   In the beach scenes, the crashing waves nearly drown out the dialogue.  Anning is constantly scrubbing, polishing, or meticulously searching out her fossils, putting an emphasis on the hard labor she puts into her work. I like the starkness and the naturalism, which is in such contrast to most period films.  There are few beauty shots here, and little romanticizing of the era. I expect the bleak, unfriendly aesthetics will make this a hard sell to many of the usual fans of costume dramas, which is a shame.

In the end I found "Ammonite" a very powerful cinematic experience.  The prickliness and stubbornness of Mary Anning turn out to hide a truly remarkable and admirable woman.  And the film really provides a sense of what her accomplishments and her way of living required, and the sacrifices that she made to keep doing what she loves.  There are stakes to the romance that give the story a rare impact, and I'm so glad to see Winslet in a role that makes such great use of her talents. 

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