Compare & Contrast: Trumbo vs Mank

It’s the rare movie that’s about screenwriting, and rarer still the ones about actual screenwriters engaged in their craft.

Recently two films about two of the most famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) screenwriters were released, and not only are they about actual screenwriters involved in writing scripts of actual films -- genuine classics in both cases -- but their protagonists are done in by the same group of antagonists (though to be fair, one film paints them merely as adversaries, not villains).

Yes, we’re pitting 2015’s Trumbo (directed by Jay Roach, written by John McNamara off Bruce Cook’s Dalton Trumbo) nose-to-nose with Mank (directed by David Fincher, written by Jack Fincher), and may the best bio pic win.

First off, the bad:
Neither film really jells seamlessly.

Both come across as a series of scenes, not a coherent story flow.

The dialog in both is too theatrical, too self-knowing though in the case of Mank’s Herman J. Mankiewicz, apparently a fair depiction of how he actually spoke (for the cheap seats:  Like a pompous asshole).

Advantage:
Mank because it never asks us to pity Mankiewicz as a self-destructive alcoholic no matter how brilliant his writing is.  Mank’s struggles are more in the trenches -- even if those trenches run through the plush offices of MGM.  Trumbo talks a lot about the struggles of the little guy but never really dips down to street level.  For all its insights and good intentions, it remains a limousine liberal story.

You can’t do a Hollywood bio pic without having Hollywood celebrities in it, and for the most part Mank keeps the most famous names and faces at arm’s length.

Yes, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) plays a pivotal role but virtually nobody today remembers the real Davies except as she was unfairly depicted in Citizen Kane.

Orson Welles is the best known name and face in Mank and Tom Burke does a top notch job of capturing him at his charismatic young genius stage.  Other off screen personalities also serve to flesh out their roles adequately, including Ferdinand Kingsley as Irving Thalberg, Charles Dance as William Randolph Hearst, and Arliss Howard as Louis B. Mayer.

On the other hand, virtually none of Trumbo’s famous players look anything like their real life counterparts.  Dean O'Gorman as Kirk Douglas comes closest at a dinner theater level of resemblance, but Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G. Robinson and David James Elliott as John Wayne are virtually unrecognizable as their actual counterparts.  

Trumbo also features Richard Portnow as their version of Louis B. Meyer and it needs be said that Mank’s Meyer is far more dynamic and compelling.

Props to Christian Berkel as Otto Preminger for coming closest to capturing the real persona behind the role, but then Preminger deliberately created a living caricature of himself for public appearances -- no matter how far over the top you go, he’s already w-a-a-a-y ahead of you. 

Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper is fairly accurate in her portrayal of Hollywood’s original queen of mean / notorious gossip columnist and plays the role as close to an absolute villain as possible.  

John Goodman and Stephen Root as producing brothers Frank and Hymie King are a delight, and Goodman simply backs up a truck and drives off with the picture every scene he appears in.

Advantage:
Mank because less is always more.

In terms of direction and cinematography, Mank is filmed in gloriously luminescent black and white.  Mank also plays with and explores the boundaries of film making much more than Trumbo.  Trumbo is an expertly made film, but a very conventional one.

Advantage:
Mank 

The key question for both is how accurate are they?

Truth be told, not very for either of them.

Oh, both films get their broad strokes down, but a lot of minor details are garbled or misrepresented.

Dalton Trumbo, for instance, did not originate The Brave One, which won him a best screenplay Oscar under a pseudonym while he was on the blacklist.  That project was handed to him by the King brothers who acquired it from special effects legend Willis O’Brien (i.e., the guy who brought King Kong to life) but then stripped out O’Brien’s fanciful stop motion allosaur to concentrate on the story of a boy and his bull.

One understands why this aspect was ignored -- it would contribute nothing to the actual story of Trumbo -- but it is the height of irony that O’Brien’s participation was cancelled due to Trumbo coming onboard.

Likewise in Mank there’s a scene where Thalberg complains the Marx Brothers started a fire and roasted hot dogs in his office; in real life Groucho & his siblings roasted potatoes.  One can understand Mank changing the menu -- the audience can “smell” a roasted hot dog easier than a roasted potato.

But enough fiddle-faddle!  How well did each capture their central character and their dilemma?

Ah, there we have a split decision.  

While Trumbo focuses on Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), it also spends a lot of time with the struggles of his coterie of fellow blacklisted scribes.

Both Dalton Trumbo and Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) fell under the curse of always being the smartest guy in the room, and when you’re the smartest guy in the room you grow impatient with all the others.

In Trumbo’s case, he runs roughshod over the eminently justifiable concerns of others involved in his crusade, and in the end his miscalculations of the era’s realpolitik led to the notorious blacklist and the rise of McCarthyism.

That he subsequently tries to mitigate this by creating an underground talent pool of ghost screenwriters is shown as positive in one sense and capitulation in another.  Trumbo -- quite accidentally -- torments screenwriter Arlen Hird (a composite character played by Louis C.K. as if he were channeling the late Ricky Jay), turning his already stressful life into pure misery.

Again, it is a tribute to Trumbo’s character -- at least the screen version of same -- that he recognizes the harm he inflicted and tries -- however inadequately -- to atone for it.

Herman Mankiewicz, on the other hand, was just an asshole -- a charming, entertaining asshole, to be sure, but an asshole nonetheless.

Both writers are laid low by far right politics determined to root out any and all “leftist” influence in Hollywood -- both the ideal and the workaday reality.

Trumbo depicts him as “a communist with a swimming pool” who enjoys the finer things in life while championing the largely unseen underdog.

The film doesn’t shy away from this and an encounter in prison with African-American felon Virgil Brooks (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is played as a reverse Shawshank Redemption in which Trumbo learns exactly how the underclass perceives his efforts on their behalf.

Mank makes more direct contact with this underclass -- while skewering Mankiewicz’ own hypocrisy in this area -- but Mankiewicz himself steers away from any direct involvement.

He’s bright and erudite and his scenes with Marion Davies do much to show the complexities found at the intersection of art / commerce / politics -- but in the end he remains more of a spectator (albeit a spectacularly self-destructive one) than a participant.

Mank creates the fictious character of Shelly Metcalf (Jamie McShane), a low grade MGM employee who makes anti-socialist propaganda for Hearst and comes to a tragic end.

This is part of what spurs Mankiewicz to a drunken rant at San Simeon aimed at Meyer and Hearst, and in the fallout of that, the inspiration for Citizen Kane itself.

This is where the two films share a profound overlap, but with wholly contrary messages.

Both films try to humanize their players.

Mank gives Meyer, Thalberg, and Hearst very human and wholly believable reactions to Mankiewicz’ assholery -- they sincerely try to save him from himself and failing that, only then do they cast him quite literally into the outer darkness.

Yet in trying to humanize them it also shows their monstrous natures.

Hearst, escorting Mankiewicz out of San Simeon for the very last time, tells him the parable of the organ grinder’s monkey, and while the story is delivered in an almost sad patrician tone, the underlying threat and menace is unmistakable. 

Trumbo, on the other hand, does a better job of humanizing its players, Hedda Hopper not withstanding (and she is depicted with deeply personal motivations, not purely ideological ones).

Quoting from the real Dalton Trumbo’s acceptance speech for his WGA lifetime achievement award, Trumbo the movie takes pains to recognize its story possesses no simplistic duality of good and evil, heroes and villains.

Both sides were caught up in a storm of societal change that swept the world and both sides did what they felt they had to do in response to it.

Trumbo doesn’t shy away from choices having consequences, but it recognizes the vast spectrum of gray in the middle.

Advantage:
Trumbo

In summation:
Two good but not flawless movies.  Mank is the more fully realized one and all around better production, but Trumbo is then one that gives you the most to chew on.

© Buzz Dixon