The Killer (David Fincher, 2023)

The Killer (David Fincher, 2023)

The problem with this one is easy, especially if you recall the fiasco of Deckard's narration in the original version of Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). You'd think filmmakers would have long since learned that unnecessary voice-overs can not only induce derisive laughter but deflate the narrative tension as well. One must assume Fincher as well as screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (adapting the graphic novel by Alexis "Matz" Nolent and Luc Jacamon) had more freedom than Scott did forty years ago so the blame for the risible narration intoned by the titular assassin (Michal Fassbender) falls on them. For the first third of the film, the nameless Killer spends almost all of his time alone waiting for the moment to assassinate a high-profile target. But instead of maintaining an air of menace or existential dread from the visuals and sound design, the Killer's preposterous voice-over thoughts about his profession take a sonic front and center. I swear I'm not trying to be cute when I claim that this narration has the pseudoprofundity of Bela Lugosi's in Glen or Glenda? (Edward D. Wood, Jr., 1953) for competition. This is doubly irritating since Fincher punctuates the sequence with a brief meeting between the Killer and the client paying for the assassination. That's more than sufficient narrative explanation to ground a voice-overless exposition. Instead, Fincher brings us right back to the Killer's rub-a-dub-dub-three-men-in-a-tub philosophizing. 

After that, the damage is done even though the narration calms down. But that gives way to a tired revenge fantasy in which yet another actress (Sophie Charlotte) serves as mere foil with barely any screen time. The cameos are fun, particularly Tilda Swinton in Ice Queen mode (does she have any other mode lately?). But the sole reason to watch, or rather, listen is the music. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score alternates between inorganic electronica and non-musical sounds such that any notion of the natural becomes irretrievable. And, for some reason, the Killer listens only to the Smiths as he jet-sets between assassinations and revenge plots. Instead of benefiting the narrative in any discernible way, the indifferent locations blow back into the music and wind up deepening Morrissey's self-absorbed warbling. The world truly doesn't care about him and "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now," say, takes on an unexpected pathos as a result.

Grade: B-minus (upped a notch for the music but then down again for the Killer's ridiculous pseudonyms - Archie Bunker? Why not Mickey Mouse?)

Alien 3 (David Fincher, 1992)/Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997)

SPOILERS  

It's probably a measure of how out of touch I am with post-classical/1960 Hollywood but I see no appreciable difference between the first four titles in the Alien franchise. (Prometheus, Ridley Scott's 2012 attempt to regain control over the series, was a new agey mess, if memory serves.) Critics professed to be bored by Alien 3; indeed, this prison planet variation is my least favorite of the four. But it still held me from the start all the way to the disorienting climax in which the prisoners and a pregnant Ripley (the ever-reliable Sigourney Weaver) try to trap the alien in a molding shaft, the equal of any scene in Aliens for blood-pressure-raising thrills.

Alien Resurrection is the delightful oddball of the franchise, the baroque entry if we use Henri Focillon's theory of genre development. Ripley is now a clone with some alien acid-blood coursing through her and she stands at a snarky distance from the mayhem. There's not much at narrative stake for her anymore so her energy is implosive and ironic, drifting through the story as if she were there to critique it. Winona Ryder is on board as Call, a robot or, as Wiki has it, "an improved version of a human created by synthetics." Together, the two form a post-feminist bond against the aliens who prove themselves to be excellent swimmers in this installment. In fact, Alien Resurrection seems designed expressly to be taught alongside Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto." Call even tells Ripley that she's not a being but, rather, a construct. It's a grad seminar happening right before us and the theorietical applications are freeing. 

Alien 3: A-minus

Alien Resurrection: A-minus 

Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

The through line in many of the reviews of David Fincher's new film Mank, a biopic of Herman J. Mankiewicz, the co-author with Orson Welles of the screenplay for Citizen Kane, is that we should not rely on Mank as a historical record, that it must be analyzed for its drama and not its accuracy. Fine. So then I'll try to make this short. 

Fincher locates the genesis of the Kane screenplay in Mankiewicz's despair over Upton Sinclair's loss in the 1934 gubernatorial election. In Fincher's telling, the campaign against Sinclair included newsreels produced by Irving Thalberg at MGM (where Mankiewicz was employed at the time) and funded by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Mankiewicz never forgave Hearst and thus jumped at the opportunity to lambaste him as Charles Foster Kane in Welles' film. 

The problem with this narrative gambit is that Fincher bit off more than he could chew. He flits back and forth between the 1934 election and the writing of Kane in 1940 in a hopeless attempt to emulate Kane's jumbled temporal structure and thus, he gives short shrift to dramatizing each event. For a good 45 minutes, the film isn't even all that comprehensible. And while I'll grant that these early scenes have a gulping energy (coupled with the attempts to make it feel like the viewer is watching a classical Hollywood film, e.g., echoing sound, cigarette burns at the top right of the frame, black-and-white photography, etc.), they come off more confusing than anything. The rhythms calm down some after that. But throw in a de facto Algonquin Room of writers (Ben Hecht, George S. Kaufman, etc.), a few parties at San Simeon, and some chats with Marion Davies and you have a mess.

Not a godawful one, mind. The two lengthy conversations between Mank (Gary Oldman) and Davies (Amanda Seyfried) evince rare moments of grace when the staircase wit stops and people converse with one another like adults. But those are balanced by an interminable, dramatically inert scene in which Mank harangues party goers at Hearst's estate with both Hearst and Louis B. Mayer improbably (oops - sorry for bringing accuracy in) sitting back and allowing him to ramble on (and puke on the floor for a coda). A decent film could have resulted from all of this in the hands of a director who approaches this kind of middlebrow peroject with a sense of economy, say, Stephen Frears. Instead, we get another bloated biopic on its way to Oscar glory.

And now if you'll excuse me, back to my Welles (and Josef Von Sternberg) Criterions (Criteria?). 

Grade: B-minus