Director: David Fincher
Cast: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Charles Dance
Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know. It seems unlikely that I would have dodged this one, but I’ve spent more than a few years trying to keep my Orson and Kane-related palette as clean as possible, but no longer!
Did I Like It: On spec, I’m probably obligated to dislike a movie where Orson Welles (Tom Burke) is clearly one of—if not the—villain of the piece, but honestly? The man probably has that coming. It’s difficult to say who was more put upon by the process of writing Citizen Kane (1941) but if the version of the story supported by Mankiewicz’s supporters (I’m mainly looking in your direction, Pauline Kael) has any degree of truth in it, then Welles was indeed the villain of his greatest triumph.
Stylistically, it feels like maybe Fincher was a bit too precious about the source material here, given that the screenplay was written by his late father. The constant sluglines as a visual motif grate on the nerves more often than not, but given the subject at hand can be forgiven. That obvious not in an effort to tell us this is about a writer doesn’t need to be there, though, it’s still a pretty tight story about a great writer often interacting with other great writers.
And, ultimately we come to the big question when it comes to films who depict Orson Welles in a narrative film. Some are eerie good, others are probably counting on memory of the man being dim in the public consciousness. Thankfully, this lands squarely on the first end of the spectrum. The voice is right, and there are several moments where Mr. Burke actually does look like the Welles of the era. It’s a fate many others have failed to accomplish, although it may help that Welles is far from a main character in the piece, and indeed flits through the proceedings as an ominous phantom.