THE HEROINE
Pauline Kael, in her 1971 essay for The New Yorker, titled ‘Raising Kane’, wrote, “The only evidence of an instinct for self-preservation in the life of Herman Mankiewicz is his choice of keen-eyed Sara.” The long-suffering wife of the brilliant but difficult Mankiewicz inspired several epithets – “keen-eyed Sara”, “ravishing Sara” – but only one, less complimentary choice appears several times in the script of David Fincher’s Mank: “Poor Sara.”
It’s a nickname caught in the act of belittling a woman while its true target, her self-destructive husband, jumps in on the joke himself. And “Poor Sara” she is not. While much of her own life is not depicted in the film, her appearances throughout, often at pivotal moments in Mank’s career, reinforce Sara as the sturdy backbone to the Mankiewicz family. Lumbered with the alcoholism of her beau, his gambling debts, and various frivolous
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