The Killer (2023)

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Skepticism is often mistaken for cynicism. (Suuuure, it is...)

Stick to your plan.

 

Anticipate. Don't improvise.

 

Trust no one.

 

Never yield an advantage.

 

Fight only the battle you're paid to fight.

 

Forbid empathy. Empathy is weakness. Weakness is vulnerability. 

 

Each and every step of the way ask yourself: what's in it for me? 

 

This is what it takes. 

 

What you must commit yourself to...if you want to succeed.

Simple.

 

It's the mantra by which the hired sniper (played by Michael Fassbender and unnamed except for some wildly amusing aliases on his I.D.'s and credit cards—he can't be accused of identity theft but might be in violation of the recent writer's strike) of David Fincher's The Killer (based on a graphic novel series by Alexis Nolent—ndp Matz—and Luc Jacamon) lives his life and dutifully repeats to himself after all the anticipation stops and he's actually required to pull a trigger—and only then, if his pulse-rate is hovering at 60.

It's the waiting that kills you. He keeps his body in shape with daily exercise, a light diet of protein—McDonald's...really?—and his mind focused with a steady stream of The Smiths and the aphorisms constantly scrolling through his head. 

 

He is in Paris, taking up temporary residence in an abandoned WeWork space across from a plush Paris penthouse that he constantly eyes for any sign of activity...or of a target. He's received an assignment, but the intended corpse is late. And this gun-man hates that. It's rude, for one thing. And if his intel is wrong about this, what else is off-track? Not that he knows anything about the target. He's not there to judge. "My process is purely logistical," he muses "narrowly focused by design. I'm not here to take sides. It's not my place to formulate any opinion. No one who can afford me, needs to waste time winning me to some cause. I serve no god, or country. I fly no flag. If I'm effective, it's because of one simple fact: I. Don't. Give. A. Fuck ."

But, he does, as far as the inefficiency goes. Cameras are everywhere. And though he purposely dresses as a German tourist to discourage any recognition...or interest...he can't help but think that his constant presence will gradually work against him, despite his M.O. of "redundancies, redundancies, and redundancies." On "Annie Oakley jobs" like this one, it's the details. "It only takes a few episodes of 'Dateline' to know there are countless ways to trip yourself up. If you can think of a dozen, you're a genius. I'm no genius." Later, he will get nostalgic: "When was my last, nice, quiet drowning?"

Maybe he should have waited until the guy got in the hotel pool. It wouldn't be a very interesting idea for a movie if everything went according to his plan. And little-by-little, that mantra becomes increasingly irrelevant and The Great Anticipator finds that he must improvise...a lot. The redundancies, redundancies, redundancies become complications, complications, complications. And, for once, he has to deal with the consequences as they hit closer to home. He finds it tough to be a target.

"I blame you...for having to bring my work home," he muses at one point. 

 

The Killer is fine, if you don't mind spend spending so much time with a conscienceless sociopath who has the advantage of never having to stick around for the aftermath—that's just something he never needs to calculate. But, when the tables turn and he actually has to give one of those fucks, there is no apparent empathy shift. He's still the coldly calculating death merchant with a penchant for pretense. And given his track record for playing sublimation and even mechanization, Fassbender is the perfect guy to play him. He's on-camera for most of the movie's running time, constantly in the sights of the view-finder and those types of marathons are tough to pull off. But, he does it with a seeming ease as the toughest thing his character can do is crack a smile.

Ultimately, it's a revenge movie—his clients don't like the outcome of the job he was hired for and so they go after him—and he has to methodically go up the chain, finding his contact, finding out his contacts, and taking them out one by one. He finds out "who", but the "why" is a bit of a mystery, unless you ascribe his own philosophy to their motivations: "From the beginning of history, the few have always exploited the many. This is the cornerstone of civilization. The blood and mortar that binds all bricks. Whatever it takes, make sure you're one of the few, not one of the many." And so he goes about his business. Whatever it takes.

Fincher's direction is full of his feints and slights of hand—the time-transitions in a cut, the "impossible" shots (he did start out in special effects and he's in his wheel-house in a CGI-world—see the video below), all carefully controlled, composed and edited with a distinctive *snap* to them. It all looks simple, but what it takes to achieve that effect is extraordinarily complicated. That it's in service to another "revenge" plot is a bit disheartening. That it's something Fincher has wanted to make for years is more than a little depressing.

Fincher is such a craftsman, that he shouldn't be punching down. Maybe he had an extra commitment to Netflix for making Mank. Maybe he wanted to see if he could curb his instincts for budget and length and make something spare with both. Maybe the option to the graphic novel's film-rights were going to lapse. Or maybe this is his attempt to make a comedy ( although I've always considered Fincher's Fight Club more of a comedy) with its assassin who seems to have grown his habit for internal monologue watching "Dexter." Maybe it's his way of making a "John Wick" movie (why you'd want to, aside from the absurdity of it, escapes me). But, this is more This Gun For Hire than Le Samouraï.

 

If he was looking to make art, he was aiming a little low.

"Of those who like to put their faith in the inherent goodness of mankind,

 I have to ask, 'Based on what, exactly?'"

Mank

The Tale of the Organ-Grinder's Monkey

or

"I built him a water-tight narrative and a suggested destination. Where he takes it, that's his job."

The film Citizen Kane has held such a reputation over the years of being an iron-clad masterpiece and possibly "the greatest film ever made" that, of course, people are going to fight over it. One can't dispute its brio and artistry, especially in comparing it to what had come before. So, the alternative is to fight about something else. Tone problems, maybe? (in a film that centers on child abandonment, it's remarkably free of sentiment and thus—it is argued—"cold").

But, no. The big argument is usually "credit." Who did what (and to whom?). And the history of Citizen Kane has been continually squabbled over in a snow-storm of exhumed scripts, continuity pages, notes, and interviews (usually accompanied by a background whine of axes grinding). It's all such flotsam in a snow-globe, shaken up with little purpose or permanence. Time would have been better spent watching the movie because, like the poster tag-line said, "It's terrific!" 

People are just trying to determine "why" that is.

Fincher not using depth-of-field; the looming shadow is that of Orson Welles

Now comes Mank, directed by David Fincher from a script by his late father (and tinkered-with by Eric Roth, who gets a producer credit in lieu of a writing one, ironically enough) and it's a deliciously inventive stirring of the pot, going maybe a bit too "inside" of Hollywood and the games people play to get work and the compromises they make to keep getting it. It is less about the making of Citizen Kane than the writing of it* and it takes the structure of Kane to tell it, weaving back and forth between screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), bed-ridden from an auto accident, holed up in working convalescence in Victorville, California, and his memories—some fueled by alcohol—of his years in Hollywood, when he wrote with the best of them and circled among the powerful, like William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his mistress, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried).

Reaction in the various corners has been predictable. The Welles loyalists  think it's a smear job and "Paulettes" (writers mentored by—or apologists for—Pauline Kael), and the Mankiewicz relations are reserved in their praise. Nobody in the Mank scenario gets out unscathed...or alive (or they couldn't have made the picture). So, if anybody "wins" it would be merely on points, no knock-out. The character assassinations are done in a circular firing squad, but no one's legacy is left un-besmirched. Credit where credit is due.

But, credit is like Truth in Hollywood. If you got it in writing, the odds are in your favor, but Hollywood is filled with myth-makers; how are you going to know if it's true...or just makes a good story. Mank takes the position that Mankiewicz, having proved his worth in Hollywood, started to take his position for granted—he was an alcoholic and a gambler, so someone for whom consequences come later. His work and his attitudes toward his bosses and his worth changed and he saw himself tolerated rather than cherished and so began to pay less fealty to his overlords. He didn't play politics with California power; politics was too important to waste on film studio's.

Burke as Orson Welles

All of this he recounts to himself, both in his proudest moments and in his weakest, as he dictates the promised screenplay "American" for the New Kid on the Block, the Wunderkind with the Iron-Clad Contract, Orson Welles (Tom Burke). Mankiewicz is writing "American" as work-for-hire, so he's getting paid but that's it. He's being overseen by Welles major domo John Houseman (Sam Troughton)—who drops by, fusses and leaves—but the work is done by Mank dictating, which gets typed up by assistant Rita (Lily Collins), whose husband is lost in the opening fires of WWII, while a nurse Freda (Monika Gossmann) handles medical attention.

Oldman's Mankiewicz with Sam Troughton as John Houseman

We talked about truth, earlier. Among other things, Mank is a movie about conspiracy. Everything about it is under the table and understood between friends. No one knows that Mankiewicz is working on a screenplay, Welles—absent while working at RKO on a planned "Heart of Darkness" movie—is kept vague about work accomplished, Houseman doesn't know that Mankiewicz has smuggled in liquor ("exercise equipment" Mankiewicz calls it), although both Freda and Rita know it and aren't disclosing—the work flows with the liquor and progress is being made.

Writers' meeting

Mankiewicz is not shown to be above this sort of "nudge-nuge, wink-wink" flummery in the past as, in flashback, he and an all-star group of studio scribes—like Ben Hecht, S. J. Perlman, George S. Kaufman, Charles McArthur and Ben Hecht go into a script meeting with David O. Selznick and "Joe" Von Sternberg and hash out the progress of an entirely fictional script that they're ad-libbing on the spot; they have been playing cards and other non-writerly things on the studio's dime. It's an intellectual game played on the "rubes" running the studio, a little arrogant "up you" from the smart guys to the dumb, unsuspecting bosses. This mutual loathing/self-loathing society will be Mankiewicz's play-book negotiating around Hollywood.

At San Simeon with Mayer (Howard) and Thalberg (Kingsley)

At parties he's invited to (thank you very much, old sport), he'll always drink too much and talk too loud and be too indiscreet around the likes of the Louis B. Mayer's (Arliss Howard) and Irving Thalberg's (Ferdinand Kingsley) because everyone knows he's clever and he's amusing and a bit of a cheeky sort good for a laugh to fill up uncomfortable party-pauses. It's what brings him to the grounds of San Simeon and the world of William Randolph Hearst, a king-maker as well, but with far more reach than over just stars and starlets. The studio heads are all about fantasy; Hearst makes it real.

Which is fine as long as the liquor is flowing and everybody laughs at—or at least tolerates—your jokes. But, when Hearst and Mayer and Thalberg collude on their own little machinations to influence the vote on the up-coming governor's race (using the M-G-M dream machine to concoct footage to promote fear of a wave of socialism taking people's jobs) that's when Mankiewicz sobers up and loses his sense of humor—and nobody likes that at a Hollywood party. Republican or Democrat.

It spells Mankiewicz's down-fall as a "trustee" and "good ol' boy" and the jobs dry up—without filmed trainloads of migrants having to take them. That and a few other ramifications of the Governor's race gives Mankiewicz the need for the Welles job, the justification for taking it, and the opportunity—and ammunition—to pay back some debts by doing what a writer does best—writing what he knows. Despite having the semblance of a happy ending (wherein Mankiewicz raises another clever middle digit), Mank is a movie that doesn't make him look good. In fact, with the exception of the character of his wife and nurses (and sympathy for the character of Marion Davies), nobody "looks good" in the film. 

But, then, nobody did in Citizen Kane, either.

Mankiewicz's triangulation by Houseman and Welles

The movie certainly looks good, though, even resplendent. Shot in high-res black-and-white that fairly vibrates on the screen, Mank is, in all ways, a labor of love for Fincher. Beyond the parental connection, he revels in the deep-focus compositions and the chiaroscuro lighting pallets in monochrome duly recorded by DP Erik Messerschmidt. Fincher has always been a stickler for composition, but combining the "old movie" format with wide-screen—and the inspiration inherent in the subject, he's like Welles' proverbial "kid in a candy store" even going so far as to include "cigarette burns"—those corner spots indicating reel changes?** (Well, maybe if you're young enough, you don't)—totally unnecessary in a streaming presentation—but here, popping up every 14 minutes or so.*** The projectionist in me was always waiting for the second one and was not disappointed. (No "jump" on the next scene, though).

Although I wasn't exactly the choir Mank was preaching to, I did watch it with a perpetual, appreciative smile on my face. It's great to see this sort of artfulness being festooned over something that merely recreates the past, rather than create a whole new reality. More risk to this, especially for those who'll twitch if they see a flaw in period or manner. 

"...she was carrying a white parasol."

The only caveat I had was one lasting thought on my brain's back-burner almost the entire picture: If Mankiewicz is so much the driving force of the finished work, why then does Fincher follow the visual language and the look of Kane...which was the work of the director?  

Because Kane wouldn't be Kane without it?

"A far too-long screenplay for the ages...John Houseman"

* There are two other films if you want to see vague watered-down versions of that, 1996's "The Battle Over Citizen Kane," an episode of PBS's documentary series "The American Experience"(which seemed to come to the conclusion that Welles and Hearst had a lot in common, which is bosh—other than ego) and RKO 281, a fictionalized account based on that documentary produced by ScottFree Productions and directed by Benjamin Ross for HBO, which is even worse. 

The best place to start is reading Pauline Kael's "Raising Kane"--which appeared in The New Yorker and accompanied Mankiewicz's (and Welles') published shooting script in "The Citizen Kane Book" (Bantam Books, October 1971). Using another scholar's work, Kael built her article on the thesis that whatever is great about Citizen Kane is presaged in the screenplay rather than Welles' interpretation of it. 

Kael was a hell of a writer but a lousy researcher—once she had what she wanted to say on her mind nothing could refute it—nor would she seek out information refuting it. On top of that, she had a running feud with fellow-critic Andrew Sarris who took up the mantle of the French "auteur theory"—that the director is the true author of a film—of which Orson Welles was considered a prime example. The article raised all sorts of holy hell, dented her reputation a tad, but she remained unapologetic. Like most of her writing, it came from her heart, not necessarily any research.

** Fincher used the joke earlier in his career with Fight Club:

*** Reels were traditionally 10 minutes in length.

"Forgive us our trespasses"

Men Don't Leave

Men Don't Leave (Paul Brickman, 1990) More significant than what a film-maker produces after they win "Best Picture" is what they create after they've had enormous box-office success. Men Don't Leave is the film Paul Brickman made after the mega-successful Risky Business, which made a star of Tom Cruise. An Americanized version of La vie continue, written by Hollywood insider Barbara Benedek, it tells the story of the Macauley family (Jessica Lange, Chris O'Donnell, Charlie Korsmo), set adrift after the sudden death of the father, leaving them with debts and an unfinished house.

They pull up stakes and move from their idyllic (though incomplete) home in the woods to urban Baltimore, where the three must cope as best they can with their grief and their circumstances, grief not only for the father, around whom the family seemed to revolve, but also for the life that his death, scatters to the four (or, I should say the three) winds. 

The family fractures in their three different attempts to create a new life that resembles the old. Beth (Lange) takes on the father's all-controlling mode and goes to work at a bakery with a monster-boss (Kathy Bates, right on the cusp of stardom in a tough, unsentimental role), son Chris (O'Donnell) tries to be the man of the house but is pulled away, beginning a relationship with an older nurse, Jody (Joan Cusack), and young Matt (Korsmo, showing what a natural, affecting actor he could be in the first role of his short career) takes to stealing VCR's to buy lottery tickets in an scheme to win enough money to try and buy the family's house back.

As a film, it is a complete turn-around from Risky Business, which was cold, cynical, and shot with a clinical eye for composition. Men Don't Leave, is warmer, more desperate, and feels more real despite some contrivances in plot—I'm not sure a hot air balloon ride could snap one out of a "stuck-in-bed" depression, but having taken one, I know that it couldn't hurt, putting into reality a perspective change that's cathartic. Brickman still manages to produce arresting images that grab your attention and produce an odd counter-point to the comedy. The film also benefits from a quirky, textured Thomas Newman score. I suppose what I like most about it is the view that catastrophes come and catastrophes go, but life—not the same life, but a life—does goes on and, however you approach it, standing still or expecting the world to change your circumstances for you is futile.

And the performances are spot on—sometimes frustrating, sometimes inexplicable—make the characters human beings and not a collection of personality ticks. My memories of the one time I saw it are vivid (it didn't last long in theaters and only was released to DVD in late 2009 through Warner Brothers Archives site), so it's on a short list of films I want to re-view to see if my first impressions have held up over time, or if the film merely touched my individual buttons. Jessica Lange says that more people talk to her about Men Don't Leave than any of her other films, so I suspect it's the former.