Mank and the Trial of the Chicago 7

 

Mank and The Trial of the Chicago 7 are both being touted as leading contenders for the coming awards season... I enjoyed both films immensely, but while the Chicago 7 seems to have enjoyed almost universal approval, quite a lot of people seem to have thought Mank wank. 

The interesting thing for me was they were both about the American Left, which has existed in name only since it was crushed by McCarthy (and rising postwar prosperity) nearly seven decades ago. The Democrats now are accused of "Socialism!!" for proposing universal health care, action on black rights, fairer pay and conditions, and laws to mitigate the worst of climate change and other measures that are part of the landscape out in the civilised world. It is a centrist party, and the Republicans are Right and Extreme Right. 

Now here are two big, glossy, mainstream feature films based on US leftist movements. Mank proposes Kane as bitter revenge by HM on Randolph Hearst (and belittling Marion Davies in the process) for using his media power to defeat a bid for office by socialist Upton Sinclair... a bid that was one of the last times the US Left still actually existed as a force... Chicago 7 meanwhile looks at the brief uprising of the counterculture aligned with student activists coalescing around opposition to the Vietnam War (the Vietnamese call it the American War). 

That brief uprising was crushed not so much by this trial and other oppressive acts and murders (Malcolm X, MLK RFK et al), as by the inexorable rise of a new brand of more aggressive and rapacious capitalism, Reaganomics, that's been with us the past forty years. I really enjoyed the intellect, drama and internal conflict of both films... but as I say, my straw poll numbers on social media seem to favour The Trial of the Chicago 7.