Black Bag (2025)

"You Are Cordially Invited to a Night of Fun and Games at George and Kathryn's"

or

"Will There Be a Mess to Clean up?" "Only if We Do it Right"

 

Something is brewing at the NCSC ("Making the UK the safest place to live and work online"), a division of the GCHQ, which is a branch of British Intelligence. Even before the titles come up, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is called to an off-site meeting with his boss, Philip Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård—another one! A month of movie releases can't go by without one with a Skarsgård in it) who informs him "we have a traitor in our midst" regarding a very hush-hush program called "Severus" and Meacham wants him to find the "mole" and "ferret" them out. "Give me two weeks" says George. Meacham replies "If Severus is deployed as intended, thousands of people will die."

 

"Okay," says George. "One week."

 

It will be that kind of movie.

 

George, you see, is a highly-regarded agent at intelligence. And so is his wife, Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett) and he is absolutely devoted to her, as she is to him. But, we've seen enough movies with husband/wife teams in the same professions where vows and oaths clash enough that they can hasten the expiration date of "'til death do you part." And in the spy game, trust is everything, depending on verifiable proof. In the marriage game, trust is usually handled in another department and hemisphere of the brain.

And George has been informed by Meacham that his wife is one of the suspects. Oh, bother. That can tests one's concepts of loyalty, what? But, being a punctilious sort he begins his investigation by inviting the suspects over for dinner, prepared by him, and with the added ingredient being a drug to lower everyone's inhibitions—he has a reputation of being able to catch anyone in a lie—and that gets an amused admonition from his wife ("Darling, you must not dose our guests."), but, as we know, he only has a week.

The dinner guests include the agency's psychiatric analyst Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), her boyfriend and agent, Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), his counterpart Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) and his girlfriend, satellite imagery specialist Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela). All work together for the agency for the head of the department Arthur Steiglitz (Pierce Brosnan), but all that really gets revealed at dinner is that Freddie, as is his way, is cheating on Clarissa, which results in her stabbing him in the hand with a steak knife. It is only one of three violent acts in the film, but it gets George no closer to the truth.

And he hasn't begun to investigate his wife, yet. As she was preparing for dinner, she happened to mention that she liked it when he watched her, but, she has no way of knowing how far that will go. He finds out her schedule—she's traveling to Zurich on business—and persuades Clarissa to temporarily way-lay a satellite and discovers that Katheryn is meeting a Soviet operative there. James informs him that she's got access to a Swiss bank account with £7 million in it and that a highly-placed colleague of the fellow she there has gone missing. Perhaps most alarmingly, Meacham—his boss who gave him the assignment of "finding the rat"—has unexpectedly died of a coronary. Things are happening pretty fast.

But, then it's a Steven Soderbergh movie. Black Bag is the second 

film he's directed film to be released in three months (the earlier one was Presence, also written by David Koepp), and it is more in the style of Soderbergh's caper movies (the "Ocean's" films, Logan Lucky, or Out of Sight), although slicker and with more of a professional veneer given the spy/thriller setting. It's stylish, witty, but with an underlying smartness that might leave some watchers in the cold. Things get complicated, red herrings abound, and if you're not paying attention, you could get lost. But, the spy vs. spy bubble the movie moves in gives it a certain edge where you're not sure whose side anybody's on at any given moment.

Call it Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy-lite, with a little bit more tech with spy-satellites and AI-enhancers and the like, plus a bit of sleuthing, psychological games, a big "MacGuffin", and even an Agatha Christie "it's-someone-in-this-room" reveal, checking off a lot of film-fan favorites. And the structure of the thing is a nice little touch. It's a clever little game, if not much of a thriller, although Soderbergh keeps it moving at a fast clip, and the badinage witty even if no one smiles. 

Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga

"Do You Have What It Takes To Make It Epic?"

or

"Bigger. Stronger. Faster. Further."

Dr. George Miller is fast approaching the age of 80 years old, and whereas most film directors lucky enough to be working at that age have a tendency to make their films slower-paced and more contemplative in nature the older they get, he has gone the opposite direction (and faster!) making movies more expansive and more energetic the more he works. 

 

Not only that, Miller's movies are getting denser—as in having more depth (rather than merely being stupid, which they most certainly are not). There are sub-texts (that aren't merely superficial call-backs to other movies, but to Myth and literature), amazing images (that sometimes recall the after-image of a Fritz Lang or of William Wyler religious epics), a sumptuousness of detail—in environments, costuming, machines—that can't be contained by mere budgets, and a pace that has only gotten faster and more daring as the years have gone on, while also NOT depriving any essential information for an audience to understand exactly what is happening. 

George Miller, at 79, is still showing young turk wannabe directors not only how to make movies (and good ones!), but leaving them in his considerable cloud of dust as he out-paces and out-flanks them.

Now, after a jaw-dropping return to making live action movies (after a 17 year absence—during which he made two "Happy Feet" animated features) with his Mad Max: Fury Road (big hit!) and Three Thousand Years of Longing (no one saw it), he's back to his Australian dystopia with a prequel to Fury Road called Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga, relating the origin story of Charlize Theron's amazon fury-imperator (now played by Anya Taylor-Joy). 

Set in five chapters (1. The Poles of Possibilities; 2. Lessons from the Wasteland; 3. The Stowaway; 4. Homeward; 5. Beyond Vengeance), it tells the story of Furiosa's abduction as a child from "The Green Place of Many Mothers", kept as a trophy by the Wasteland biker-warlord, Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth—in a performance somewhere between a Bond villain and a mad Peter O'Toole), her trade to the Citadel to become a bride of Immortan Joe (now played by Lachy Hulme), and her escape to hide in plain sight as a Citadel worker.

Her ultimate goal is to return to "The Green Place" (we learned what became of that in Fury Road) but, for the purposes of this movie, she is concerned with vengeance against Dementus as the off-kilter boss-wannabe had killed her mother, who had come after the bikers in an attempt to get Furiosa back. And to do that, she must first shed her disguise and become mobile—which she does in "The Stowaway" section (which is one big chase sequence), gaining access to Dementus' "War Rig" and assisting its driver Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) to ward off pirate attacks in its supply efforts across The Wasteland.

What we've got here is a feminist version of The Searchers, where the kidnap-victim takes it upon herself to free herself from her captors, rather than waiting around for someone else to do it (hard to do as her only known relative was her mother). And along the way, we learn how Furiosa gained her "mad" skills, and how she managed to lose her left arm (and its significance to her quest).

Furiosa has all the hallmarks of a "Mad Max" movie—despite having only one shot of "Max" (Jacob Tomuri) in the entire thing. It careens, it propels, it defies expectations—except to pump adrenaline and amaze in how it builds its world out of spare parts (Dementus drives a chariot pulled by three motorcycles)—and does the vast majority of it using practical effects (a few of the explosions and other bits of business are augmented by CGI) and some of the most daredevil-ish stuntmen on the planet.

But, Miller is pushing the film-making illusions, as well. There's always been a bit of under-cranking (the act of filming at a lower frame-rate to make the action appear faster on the screen) in the "Mad Max" films, but here Miller takes it even farther. If Fury Road was a "10" in that department, Miller risks taking it to "12." There's always the danger of making things look cartoonish that way, but Miller, at this point, doesn't seem to care. There are parts of Furiosa that feel like you're watching it dosed on Ambien, so hyper-kinetic is the result, and the effect is unnerving. But, it works subjectively, despite the objections of some purists.

It's also one of the most "in-your-face" movies in my memory, with quite a few shots that literally zoom in to characters' faces and might cause your foot to instinctively stamp on an imaginary brake pedal (there's one that propels into a face as it explodes in the last frame!). It is dizzying and quite the rush, all the more so because Miller is a director who keeps you aware of where things are and where they relate to the camera. There is nothing scatter-shot about what he does; the only hap-hazardness is what he has happen on-screen.

It's great. Wonderful story-telling. But, it's not for the sensitive—"sequences of strong violence and grisly images" and all that—but apocalyptic dystopias rarely are. And Furiosa is a nice little dervish-y spin on the Mad Max Universe and a fresh take on its tropes.

 

Miller's got another story ready to film out of this Fury Road saga. It'll probably be even more dynamic. Miller, approaching 80, isn't one to slow down.

Oh, by the way, I guested on the Furiosa episode of The Lambcast podcast, and it's out now. Check it out.

Living

Taps for "Mr. Zombie"

or

First, Do No Harm

 

An anglicized version of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (adapted by Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote "The Remains of the Day")—which was itself an adaptation of Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and directed by Oliver Hermanus, the least one can say about Living is that it does it source proud.

 

Living begins with vintage footage of 1950's London, which will slowly transition from grainy home-movie shots of anonymous footage of bustling city by-ways to, finally, landing on images of individuals rather than merely sartorially-clad ants scurrying in landscapes of blanched stone. One notices that the footage is in the "Kodak" square ratio (1.48:1), fitting the period, and never leaves it because, let's face it, the story doesn't deserve wide-screen. There are no picturesque vistas, no grand horizons, no snakes or parades or any of the other subjects that require a movie-screen to stretch. Just people. And a box is more than enough space for that.

It's certainly enough for Rodney Williams (Bill Nighy—being touted for a "career-best performance", but I think is, rather, a sterling example of an artist doing as little as possible and getting the maximum effect). Mr. Williams is a bureaucrat in the London County Council, where he does (appropriately) "as little as possible" and shuffles paper for projects that no one in any of the divisions wants to deal with. More often than not, he will be given a file, sent from another department that has been forwarded in the chain, and he will merely file it, with a non-committal "We can keep it here. It will do no harm."

It will, in fact, do nothing at all. The files that surround his little division are derisively nick-named "sky-scrapers" by his group (but not within Mr. Williams' hearing, who is also derisively nick-named "the old man"—even that is not so colorful and merely generic). Williams will assign underlings to deal with requests, where they will travel up the circuitous stair-cases of the building only to be dismissed in another office as "not the appropriate office" and the shuffling begins anew. Until, of course, it comes to rest, where it "will do no harm." Such is the everyday life of a British bureaucrat in the increasingly oxymoronic "Public Works". The uniform of suit and derby, the commute by train, the shuffling.

Unless it's the shuffling off of one's mortal coil. Williams announces to his staff that he will, unusually, be leaving early on this one day—so sorry for the bother, but can't be helped—and Williams goes off to his doctor's office. There is no blunt foreshadowing in the waiting room (as per this week's scene), merely the chilly call to the office and the pronouncement of limitations. "It's never easy, this" says the doctor, who gives him six more months. Williams pauses and as an acknowledgment of the doctor's pain and not his own says only one word. "Quite."

He will tell no one, not his son, nor his daughter-in-law, his co-workers, although he rehearses the act, always with the proviso "it's such a bore." He will do something uncharacteristic in the first days of his last days—he takes half his savings, buys a deadly amount of sleep medication and goes on a brief holiday (not even informing his co-workers), where during a breakfast, he will meet a young artist (Tom Burke) with insomnia and make a pact: he will offer his medications to the young man if he will show him how to "live a little" "I don't know how," he offers.

He will learn. A little. In the little time he has left.

 

It's a small incident, tentative, as is the entire film, but explores risk, as will the rest of the film. The risks he takes a small, insignificant, but not to him, and will have small repercussions, ultimately, in the scheme of things. But, not to him. I've been doing a small feature here, which I call "Walking Kurosawa's Road" because I've found in my viewings of the Japanese master-director, an impenetrable "something" that has always left me unmoved. The series has only covered Kurosawa's work before Rashomon—where, suddenly, the world discovered him—but, I've seen many, many of his films and, of all of them, Ikiru (the film on which Living is based) is my favorite...so far.

Living is close to it—it doesn't have Kurosawa's brutal, almost cruel, honesty, replacing it with a British reserve, and it chose to leave out the gangsters (although, they might have done if William's trip had been to Brighton Rock), but it does remain true to its source, that being Tolstoy. Kurosawa took Tolstoy's themes and crafted something original and Living merely transposes it to the Britain of the same era. And although the settings and cultures are far afield, the sentiment, the universality—the humanness—is still there, shining humbly, whether one lives in Moscow or Tokyo or London...or Timbuktu, for that matter.

Rather than kvetch that Living is merely a remake—Kurosawa has had many Western remakes (sometimes literally) of his work—one should appreciate how cinema—good cinema and good story-telling—can show us our commonality and what unites us, rather than what divides us.

 

Living does so, exquisitely.

The Wonder (2022)

Preying For a Miracle

or

"The Stories We Tell Ourselves"
 

"Hello. This is the beginning. The beginning of a film called "The Wonder." The people you are about to meet—the characters—believe in their stories with complete devotion. We are nothing without stories. And so we invite you to believe in this one. It is 1862. We've left England bound for Ireland. The Great Famine still casts a long shadow, and the Irish hold England responsible for that devastation, There, sits a nurse. An English nurse. Traveling all on her own. And it's with her, we begin."

 

Most movies don't start out this way, telling you that what you're seeing is a movie. One would assume that any semi-intelligent person would figure that out. In The Wonder, director Sebastián Leilio even takes the film down to its studs, showing you the set, lights and stage-framers (even a fan or two) while telling you to go with it before going through "the fourth wall." It's a story. And this is make-believe, despite the deliberateness of the verisimilitude.

It's nothing new (just rare). Laurence Olivier won an Oscar Best Picture by starting his Henry V as a stage play and then moving it out to become a "movie-movie" on location. How many TV anthology shows had a host walking onto the set to address the audience?

But, this discomfort of "looking behind the curtain" does not last long; with the second shot, we're back to movie-normalcy, following the journey of Nurse Elizabeth Wright (Florence Pugh) to her location of employment in rural Ireland just past the Potato Famine. She has been hired by a village council of the town who are looking for a medical observer of their local miracle: an 11 year old girl, Anna O'Donnell (Kíla Lord Cassidy) has not eaten for four months (but still appears healthy) subsisting on just water and, as she says, "manna from Heaven."

The girl receives visitors from nearby villagers who seek her out as a religious icon. The council, all men (of course), seek answers: the medical doctor, McBrearty (Toby Jones) is out of options; the parish priest (Ciarán Hinds) needs validation, councilman John Flynn (Brían F. O'Byrne) is fervently religious, and believes the child is a saint. Nurse "Lib" herself, having served as a nurse in the Crimean War, and having lost a child and a husband, has no illusions and no agenda and her dispassionate analysis will serve as a "control" to the watch of Sister Michael (Josie Walker), lest there be any religious bias. The council is wary of scandal as local boy Will Byrne (Tom Burke), whose pursuit of a journalism career allowed him to escape the fate of his family during the Famine, is reporting on the story.

Nurse "Lib" is cold and dispassionate, per the requirements of the job of witness, but she can't help empathizing with the girl, while being wary of the council's various agendas. "Lib" has issues, too. To fight off the sorrow of losing her child, she consoles herself with laudanum until it dulls her into a sleeping stupor. It's another reason, she is drawn to her charge, and as the child starts getting weaker, Elizabeth starts to get more pro-active, defying the religious beliefs of her parents and the preoccupations of the council.

That's just one of many conflicts occurring in The Wonder: Ireland vs. England, rural vs. urban, medicine vs. dogma, fact vs. superstition, things as they are vs. things as perceived, faith vs. zeal, and conscience vs. duty. But, to the nurse, it is just one conflict: life vs. death, and no other arguments can dissuade her that that is the priority, even if it makes her a pariah in the town. And Florence Pugh (once again) surprises with just how good she is at communicating the thoughts required in the heads of her characters. She makes it look so genuine, unpracticed, unrehearsed, and simple, but no less passionate. She is one actress who one should not take for granted that she will energize whatever project she undertakes, or startle with how ingenious she is. She reminds me of Vanessa Redgrave, how precise, yet unconventional and right she makes her characters.

Special mention must be made of the work of cinematographer Ari Wegner (she shot The Power of the Dog, and seems to specialize in finding the beauty in the perverse and making horizons pop off the screen), who takes Leilio's tableaux and bends light around them like Rembrandt or Vermeer, edging light around faces just enough to expose the unsure flick of an eye or the subtle setting of an expression, no matter how few foot-candles are in the room. There are moments that you just want to put a frame around, so intricate is the lighting in places.

One sympathizes with the movie and its protagonist's goal—to find the Truth in a chaotic blur of fictions and motivational feints, like a mystery story. But, then, one can relate, as one looks for unassailable facts in a world where faith is enough no matter the dangers of opinion, interpretations, deflections and outright deliberate mendacity.

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"