I was tired he apologizes for the television problems that led Netflix to ask him what he wanted to do next. “I have a black and white story that is not even stereo, I told them and they answered me Have you seen Rome.
Beyond Mank’s visual, narrative and interpretive achievements , what makes Fincher most proud of his latest work is that it is part of a revolution taking place on screens. “We are in the middle of an interesting renaissance of the medium.
I have nothing against studios, but the war of digital platforms has whetted an appetite for telling many different kinds of stories. It is a great moment to tell stories and I don’t care if they are seen on a mobile phone ”, it is dispatched. “Television is like the novel you read before bed. You decide when to turn off the light. A movie is a distilled experience, where even the dullest moments have been polished. They are different disciplines, and as much as I am interested in Mankiewicz and his many stories in Hollywood,Mank has a concise narration, of two hours and eight minutes, and everything is concentrated there. That is his universe ”.
Robert Downey Jr. described working with Fincher as as tough an experience as living in a gulag. Fincher denies that fame. “All the time I was telling them, less, less, less. Give me something simpler. Gene Hackman was a genius at playing people. No more. I was looking for the minimalism of Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, the pre-Brando interpretation “, he details.
So minimal was his work with the actors that Gary Oldman was left naked, without makeup to resemble Mankiewicz. Fincher is aware that his artistic requests can sound pretentious: the black and white (shot with digital cameras, although adding some dirt and stripes to the image to look like old celluloid)
The mono sound or a detailed Trish period costume Summerville, part of the director’s regular team. “I didn’t want to make a movie of now telling a story from then. I wanted to make a film from that period, and we remember that time in black and white ”, he points out.
Past times with many connections to the new millennium, especially when he talks about the power of media conglomerates. “When my father included that in the script I was not interested, but then the last elections came and it was very clear how the new social platforms can tip the balance.”
