In a way, it’s unfortunate that the much-heralded film Mank came out when it did, limited to home screens and deprived of its rightful perch on the big screen. Here, after all, is an artful film-about-film, which also poses some major historical assertions. Primarily, Mank affirms the controversial notion that screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz essentially wrote Citizen Kane, rather than presumed auteur Orson Welles, and also that Marion Davies deserves more love and respect then she’s gotten as the paramour of William Randolph Hearst (and, by fictional proxy, Charles Foster Kane) and as a talent-challenged singer/actress.
Enter versatile actress Amanda Seyfried, whose performance as Davies has rightfully earned her wide praise and her first Oscar nomination — not to mention the celebratory hot seat of SBIFF’s Montecito Award honor. Seyfried’s new spotlight is well-deserved, for an actress, 35, whose filmography ranges from Mean Girls to flexing her singing savvy in Mamma Mia! and Les Misérables, to Atom Egoyan’s Chloe, Paul Schrader’s masterpiece First Reformed, and now the Mank award season buzz.
We caught up with Seyfried while she was decamped in Georgia, where her husband, actor Thomas Sadoski, was working (they have two children, one born last September). She admitted to looking forward to returning to their beloved home farm in upstate New York, and to Zooming in, virtually, to Santa Barbara for a night.