Why Mank Will Win Best Picture
'Tis the week before the Oscars, and 8 films are ramping up their campaigns in a last-minute push for the top prize of them all, Best Picture. The biggest award has the potential to be either one of the most anticlimactic or most surprising result in recent years. The former is true, because really only two films have won any of the prizes on the awards circuit, and one of those [Chloe Zhao's Nomadland] is a notable step ahead in the sweepstakes. However, neither frontrunner is a traditional winner, nor is without controversy; those facts, as well as the Oscars' less predictable preferential voting system means that no nominee can be counted out of the race. Spotlight's and Moonlight's upsets in 2016 and 2017, and Parasite's stunner last year taught us to expect the unexpected, so we're here to give fans of all 8 nominees reason to believe on Sunday.
To kick off this series, I'm starting with the Best Picture nominee that I saw the earliest. It is widely agreed upon that the biggest Best Picture snub in Academy Award history occurred in 1942 when How Green Was My Valley beat all other nominees for the award, including a little film known as Citizen Kane. The latter, of course, would go on to be almost universally recognized, by multiple film institutes as the greatest film ever made, serving testament to the fact that not only does the “best” movie not always win the biggest prize, it arguably is unlikely to do so, for a variety of reasons. If there’s a path to victory next Sunday for Mank, it likely lies in this historical quirk.
Mank tells the story of famed screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, and more specifically, his story around the time he developed the screenplay for Citizen Kane. Shot in black-and-white, there are several obvious odes to the source material. Obviously, Mankiewicz is the protagonist, making him the central and sympathetic figure, but there are a number of familiar icons that run through the story, not the least of which is Orson Welles, long considered the brilliant mind behind Citizen Kane, a view this film dares to contest. It’s no secret that the Academy can’t resist a movie about Hollywood. Can they possibly resist a movie about some of Hollywood’s most famous figures, and arguably its greatest film ever? Can they resist the opportunity to revise history by indirectly giving Citizen Kane the Best Picture win it deserved, 80 years later?
There’s also an “auteur theory” argument for Mank’s odds. Directed by David Fincher, Mank’s screenplay was actually conceived by Fincher’s late father Jack in the 90s, but not brought into the world until this last year. Fincher is already a well-respected director, and in the eyes of many was snubbed of his major award(s) when The Social Network was swept in the 2011 Academy Awards. The fact that he took up his father’s project might add an extra layer of sympathy voting potential, and given that he is not nominated for Best Director, Best Picture would be the way to give him that recognition they might feel he deserves. Furthermore, the film is helmed by two monstrous acting performances. One comes from Amanda Seyfried, long considered a respectable actress, and one from industry veteran Gary Oldman, the 2018 Best Actor winner at these awards. Given the mega-wattage name recognition at play, and the fact that both actors are themselves nominated for Academy Awards, this could be a case where the actors carry their film to a Best Picture victory.
There’s not a clear-cut critical or commercial argument for Mank. The film is neither the biggest nor the best-reviewed of the nominees. But it performed admirably in both arenas, and its thematic material, as well as the people that make it a success, might just be enough for it to secure enough support for an upset victory next week.
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